


i'm feeling younger, every time that i'm alone with you

by Tate



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (it's not much but alcohol is consumed), Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, High School Theatre AU, Jon and Sansa Are Not Related, Jon has a crush on Sansa the entire time! and she's got no clue!, This is going to be supremely unsatisfying ESPECIALLY if you've not read the other part of the fic, Underage Drinking, a touch of Jon/Ygritte but itsatlb dictates you've got nothing to worry about lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tate/pseuds/Tate
Summary: “Robb has volunteered Jon Snow as Sansa’s taxi service,” Catelyn tells her husband, leaning her cheek into the kiss he moves to press there.“It saves a trip if he’s already with her,” Robb insists. He appeals to his father: “Sansa needs a lift to and from rehearsals for the next couple of weeks, and they’re not finishing up until, like, half-ten. Dad, you taught Jon to drive. You know he’ll be careful.”Ned turns to Catelyn. “The lad can drive…”Catelyn raises her eyebrows. “Well, if you’re okay with it…”AKA the prequel to "in the summer, as the lilacs bloom", the only thing that will give you any kind of payoff to this fic. Jon's got a crush on Sansa, Sansa's got no idea; it's kind of about a production of "Florian and Jonquil" but it's also just kind of about Jon and Sansa.





	i'm feeling younger, every time that i'm alone with you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts).



> Here it is – The Prequel That Was Promised. Hope you like it. Katie hates me for writing this, so I dedicate it to her.
> 
> (Also, unbeta'd. I'll probably go through and fix any typos later, but, like, also maybs not?) x

**I’m feeling younger, every time that I’m alone with you**

One afternoon, shortly after the Christmas holidays, Sansa and Arya have the notably sizeable Stark home all to themselves. Ned has taken Rickon to the boy’s Rippa Rugby game, and Catelyn is accompanying Bran to a screening of some bird documentary at the local library, while Robb – who, notably, has finally sacked up and asked the girl he fancies to see a film with him – is at the cinema with Jeyne Westerling. The past week has been filled with excitement for all three Stark sons, equal degrees of ecstatic despite absolutely polar reasons. Sansa and Arya, by comparison, are more tempered.

The two aren’t speaking – Arya’s in her room doing heaven knows what while Sansa takes advantage of the blissfully free kitchen. She’s decided to make lemon cakes, a task as therapeutic as it is rewarding, and she sings through all of Jonquil’s solo numbers as she bakes. (Auditions aren’t for weeks, but it can’t hurt to be prepared.)

There’s the sound of a car, though Sansa can’t imagine who it might be; no one has been out long enough to merit the completion of their tasks. Even her father, unless he’d had to return for Rickon’s likely-forgotten water bottle, shouldn’t be back so soon.

She decides it’s probably best to go and check. She’s oldest, after all, no matter the skills Arya has begun to pick up from her new foray into fencing. Sansa is the responsible one, and ought to act as such. Though, when she turns toward the door, she finds there’s no need for that. She sees whose car it is.

It’s Robb’s friend Jon. Robb’s _best_ friend.

He’s just – standing there. Caught in the doorway like he’d meant to walk past, and then he’d seen her. And now she’s seen him see her. They’re seeing _each other_.

“Hi, Jon,” Sansa says, ever courteous despite the fact they’ve not really spoken in all the years he and Robb have been joined at the hip. “I’m guessing Robb didn’t tell you he was going to the cinema with Jeyne Westerling?”

Jon’s eyebrows dart up. “ _Oh_. He’s already left.” He takes a step closer, over the threshold of the kitchen, as Sansa nods. “He asked me to come around to give him a pep talk or help him pick a shirt or something – ” Sansa has to force back a giggle at this, because it’s romantic that boys are thinking so deeply about dates they go on, but it’s also _hilarious_ because it’s _Robb_ – “but I only just got off work.”

Sansa notices some flour on her shirt and tries to brush it off as best she can without pawing her own chest in front of her older brother’s best friend. “Yes, it’s just me and Arya home, I’m afraid.”

Jon, in the midst of some assertive burst of blinking when she looks up at him, nods. “I did think it was odd that Robb’s car wasn’t outside, but he’s left it at Theon’s enough times after a few drinks that I thought he might’ve just done that again.”

Sansa takes a few steps toward the oven, checking on the progress of her lemon cakes. “Nope – he’s on a date.” She leans over to better investigate the baking. “It’s about time, though. I was getting sick of his moping.”

She hears Jon snort. “You, too?” he asks.

(When she looks up, there’s a warm kind of smile on his face. Beth Cassel has always said Jon was good-looking, and now, instantaneously, Sansa gets it.)

She raises her eyebrows. “Robb takes the piss out of me for being a hopeless romantic, but he’s really the most hopeless of anyone.”

This earns her a chuckle, and perhaps resultantly, in a weird way, her heart swells.

“Yeah,” Jon nods, “you can say that again.” He points to the oven. “What’ve you got there, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Lemon cakes!” says Sansa. “They’re my favourites. I figured I’d take advantage of a quiet kitchen.”

“Must be one of the first you’ve seen in your life.”

She laughs, almost surprised at his capacity to joke. “It _is_.”

She pulls on Catelyn’s oven mitts (her father’s monogrammed ones are lovely, but they fit the same way she imagines clown shoes might) and opens the oven door, retrieving the now-golden lemon cakes as the unquestionable aroma of lemon-based baking nearly overwhelms her.

“I think they’re about done,” she tells Jon, when her skewer comes out clean. “D’you want one?”

“ _Oh_ – uh – ”

“You’ve driven all the way here – and Robb will be home soon enough. You’re welcome to wait.” When he still looks hesitant, she adds, “If you go, I’ll probably end up eating all of these myself before anyone else gets home.”

“What about Arya?” Jon asks.

Sansa scrunches up her face. “She won’t want any. Too worried she’ll catch my germs and trade in her leo for lip gloss.”

“Heaven forbid you have both.”

He says this with a very casual sarcasm as he moves to join her at the kitchen island; it’s the kind of dry tone she takes to mean he’s warming to her. The fact he’s not mocking her – as even Robb would have – raises a strange sunlight inside her chest. She likes Jon. She can see why everybody always has.

“Pick whichever one you like,” she tells him, waving a hand over the lemon cakes in question.

His eyes flick up over her face. “Aren’t you usually meant to wait?” he asks once he meets her eyes. “Until they’re – cooled?”

“I mean, technically, yes – but I always like them most when they’re warm.”

To illustrate her point, she hops up on one of the bar-type stools and picks a cake at random. In the process, it just about scalds her fingers. The flicker of concern that passes over Jon’s face when she flinches tells Sansa her misstep hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“I stand by my point, although piping hot and warm are… markedly different temperatures.”

Jon, now on the bar stool beside-but-perpendicular to her – one of the two at the pseudo-head of the kitchen island – gives her a compassionate, apologetic upward turn of his lips.

“Don’t worry,” Sansa says quickly, “we’ll just give them a couple of minutes.”

For good measure, she starts fanning them with her hands, trying to dispel the awkwardness. Jon mirrors the motion.

“ _So_ – you said you came from work. Where do you work?”

“The – uh – have you been to that Far North tramping warehouse up off Hardhome Road?”

Not one to have ever done much tramping in her life, Sansa says no. “But I know where it is, if that helps.”

“Yeah – well, I was gonna say I work at the rock climbing centre they share a car park with, so.”

“Oh, cool!” She can’t profess to have had any vague – or explicit – interest in rock climbing in her life, but it certainly beats the retail jobs she’s been thinking about applying for. “Are you putting people in harnesses, or – what do you do there?”

Jon nods. “Yeah, I do that kind of thing – make sure people are safe, hold onto ropes to keep them from – y’know – falling.”

“Always beneficial.”

“Generally, yeah.”

Sansa has a second go at a lemon cake and, with a careful blow on the cake before biting into it, she finds herself successful.

“Good to go,” she tells Jon, her free hand covering her mouth and then pointing at the cakes and sticking her thumb up.

“Oh – great – ” Jon picks one up and bites into it, chewing a few times before swallowing and saying, “I can see why you’d have eaten them all by yourself. It’s a good job I’m here to spare you that fate.”

“You’re a hero,” Sansa tells him.

He chuckles at that. (She decides she likes making him smile; for something she’s seen so rarely, the warmth does suit his face.)

They go through several more lemon cakes each, as she asks about work and school and what he’s into (he likes his job, and his friend Alys Karstark worked with him for a little while which was a grand old time but unfortunately over now because she betrayed him for the previously mentioned Far North warehouse across the way; he’s enjoying sixth form as much as anyone can and is hoping to get into a law school in London next year – “I love London!” Sansa exclaims. “I want to move there as soon as I can and I don’t think I’ll ever come back.” To this, Jon says he doesn’t nearly have the same affinity for it that she does, and he’d thought about Scotland for ages and ages, but Robb and the recent national rankings both pointed to this London university, so that’s what he’s hoping to do). Once Jon seems suitably embarrassed talking about himself – his ears have gone pink, Sansa notices – the conversation switches towards Sansa, and school, and _her_ aspirations:

“Short term,” she says, picking up another lemon cake, “I want to play Jonquil in the school musical this year. She’s – ”

“ – the female lead?” Jon surmises.

Sansa furrows her eyebrows.

“I’ve read the book it’s based on,” he explains. He eyes up the lemon cake in his hand. “I think you’d suit the role.”

Sansa beams at him. “I hope so! They usually pick older girls when they can, but I figure, I know the songs, and I’ve been doing shows all my life – ”

“You’re _good_ , too,” Jon says, and he explains, “I saw you in the show last year – I went because Robb was doing it, but your solos in that Lady Shella song – ”

“ – _Lovely Lady Shella_ – ”

“ – Yeah. They were nice. You were the best servant by far.”

She grins at him. “I’ll have you know the preferred title is ‘handmaiden’.”

“Oh,” he replies, in the same mockingly serious tone, “my apologies. You were the best _handmaiden_.”

“Cheers, Jon.”

“No worries.”

They chat for a while longer, until they notice that the lemon cakes have cooled and Sansa forces herself to pack some of them up for later, if not for the rest of her family. Jon helps her clean the kitchen, despite initial protestations from Sansa. Once they’ve settled down again, a text comes in from Jon’s great uncle Aemon, whom he lives with a few streets away. “He says he needs me home soon – he needs company. Our neighbour’s pet raven is driving him mad. I can see why; it’s more like an aggressive, foreboding parrot than anything else.”

“Fair enough,” says Sansa. “You’ve missed Robb entirely, though.”

“That’s alright,” Jon tells her. “Judging from the time he’s been gone, he’s got caught up with Jeyne anyway. I’m bound to hear all about it.”

“Better you than me,” Sansa giggles.

“Oh, thanks. Can’t wait to be subjected to a four-hour recount.”

“Only four hours?”

“I’m trusting he’ll be either rendered speechless or calmed down enough to be succinct.” He catches her eye. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be so optimistic.”

“Oh, I think a bit of optimism’s always good.”

Jon throws her a grin. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’d – uh – I’d better go. Bird and all. But… this was nice.”

“It was.”

“Thanks for the lemon cakes.”

“Any time.”

He gives her another smile, half over his shoulder, and a wave to go with it. Sansa responds in kind.

Ned and Rickon come in the front door almost as soon as Jon’s closed it.

“We saw Jon backing out,” says Sansa’s father.

“Yes, he came in search of Robb. Fruitless, unfortunately – he’d already left for the cinema.”

Ned pours Rickon a glass of water – “Drink up – I’m not having you dehydrated because you refuse to take responsibility for your water bottle” – and then comes up beside his daughter, still at the kitchen island. “I thought Robb’s outing was at three.”

“It was,” Sansa confirms.

“Jon was rather late expecting to catch him if he only showed up five minutes ago.”

“Oh! No, he didn’t!” Sansa smiles. “He came earlier and ended up staying a while.” She holds up her plastic container of lemon cakes. “Fell in love with these and couldn’t bring himself to leave.”

Her father surveys her, a glint in his eye, and then he wraps an arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her hair. “Aye, sweetheart. I think you’re absolutely right.”

*

Auditions for _Florian and Jonquil_ roll around.

Sansa gets the role she’s always wanted.

*

“Why didn’t you go out for it?” Arya asks Robb when the cast is announced. “Thought you’d be itching to play a knight.”

Robb makes a face. “Jonquil was always going to be Sansa’s. I didn’t exactly want to skip out on being captain of the rugby team so I could romance my _fifteen-year-old sister._ ”

“Jon, then,” Arya shrugs. She’s never had much time for tales. “He could’ve done it, and then Sansa wouldn’t have to kiss Harry Hard-on.”

Robb snorts at the insult, and Sansa feels her cheeks burn. “Jon’s not homely, though,” she points out, eyes firmly planted on the plastic-bound, photocopied script in front of her – taking in nothing. “Florian’s meant to be homely.”

“I don’t see who’s _homelier_ than Jon – he’s here every bloody day – ”

“That’s not what homely _means_ ,” Sansa insists. “It means plain-looking.”

“Is Jon not plain-looking?” Arya asks.

Robb barks out a laugh. “Plain old sad sack, maybe.”

Bran wheels into the room then. “What’s this about Jon?”

“Could’ve been in the play – ”

“ – It’s a _musical_ – ”

Arya pokes her tongue out at Sansa: “ – _big deal_ – and Sansa would’ve been saved from a kissing scene with Harry Hardyng.”

Bran – having seen the last show Harry had been part of, _The_ _Eyrie_ , in which Robb played a warring prince and Sansa the lowborn Alayne – furrows his eyebrows. “Not Harry the _Heir_?”

“Harry the _Airhead_ ,” Robb mutters. Arya high-fives him.

Sansa flips through her script somewhat disgruntledly. “It’s _three_ kissing scenes, thank you, Arya.”

“And you said _Jon_ should do it?” Bran asks Arya, perplexed.

“Technically, she said _I_ should do it first – ”

“ – That’s… gross – ”

“ – That’s what _I_ said – ”

“ – Shut _up_ , Robb!” Arya elbows him for good measure. “Jon was just the next bloke I thought of,” she insists. “But Sansa didn’t seem to think he was _ugly_ enough.”

“Jon’s _not_ ugly,” Sansa says, because he isn’t.

Bran furrows his eyebrows. “And Harry _is_?”

She rolls her eyes. “If his face isn’t, his personality is.” She inspects her script again with a sigh. “But there’s no use going back and forth about any of this. He’s playing Florian, I’m playing Jonquil, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

“I’m not looking forward to watching those scenes,” Arya says.

Her brothers, both gazing downward forlornly, agree.

*

The problem is this: tall, muscular, and the peak of conventional handsomeness if overpoweringly strong-featured, Harry Hardyng _should_ be the leading man of every fifteen-year-old girl’s dreams. And he would be – but Sansa knows him. Sansa knows how he _is_. And, within a week of rehearsals beginning, she’s struck with nothing but the deepest dislike.

He’s not bad as a dance partner, but that’s only because he’s big and strong enough to lift her where need be. They fit well together physically, looking every part the lovestruck protagonists – and it’s these looks that Sansa thinks got them cast opposite one-another. He’s _sullen_ , though. And more than that, he’s judgmental. She could take sullen if it masked softness, but in this case it _doesn’t_. Harry’s got something to say about everything, and the apologies that follow feel more like olive branches he’ll praise himself for extending later than genuine ones for her to grasp.

It’s not that they don’t get along at times, because they do, but more often than not she’s left filing away things to complain to Robb and Arya about later. It disappoints Sansa that she loves every part of the show except the boy she’s meant to. (And the chorus girls who resent her for playing his Jonquil, whispering behind her back about how she sings and about how she probably _does_ have a crush on him; at one point, Sansa has to laugh at a rumour that gets back to her about how _clingy_ she is to Harry, when she really can’t stand being in a conversation with him for any great length of time.)

The next six weeks do nothing to change things.

“How was your rehearsal?” Robb asks as he joins Sansa at the edge of the rugby field following the adjournment of his practice.

“Exhausting,” she replies, turning toward the car park when he does. She dabs once more at her sweaty face with the edge of her shirt. “We did well, though. Got through a lot. Of course, half of the cast will have forgotten by next time we run it – ” At this, she groans, and Robb laughs – “but there’s nothing to be done about that.”

“Jon’s signed up to do backstage,” Robb says offhandedly.

“Why?”

“Why not?” he shoots back. “No, actually, I’ve no idea, if I’m honest.” – Jon’s previous extracurricular activities have been limited, to say the least – “He said he thought he should get more involved in his last year.”

Sansa considers it as Robb flicks the unlock button on the keys to his Land Rover. “Maybe it’s for uni applications.”

“Maybe.” She tosses her bags in the back and buckles herself in. “Ready for your match this weekend?”

“Ready as we can be,” Robb says. “Theon’s family’s from out there and he says it’s full of tough lads.”

“Is this tough from _Theon’s_ perspective, or, like, proper tough?”

Robb snorts. “Probably proper tough – we only beat them last year because they’d lost so many sixth formers. I’m just glad we’re not playing Theon’s sister’s team.”

Sansa laughs. “Oh, God, you’d _die_.”

“I actually _would_ , though.”

On Saturday, thankfully, the only Greyjoy to be seen is Theon. He stands with Sansa and Arya – Rickon’s Rippa Rugby game taking precedence for the other four Starks – and Jon and Jeyne Westerling, whose presence is becoming increasingly frequent.

The game is close, nail-bitingly so, and Theon and Arya take to shouting at the student ref midway through the first half. Jon has to dart and catch Arya before she storms the field to give the boy a piece of her mind (and her fist), and she spends the next ten minutes in a one-armed restraint, just for safety. Sansa and Jeyne – supportive, but without Theon and Arya’s fire – opt for the safe, uncontroversial _Go, Robb!_ which they implement whenever the ball goes his way.

At half-time, Theon spots someone he knows on the opposition’s stretch of sideline, and Jeyne whisks Arya off to the field’s canteen in search of a coffee and something that will calm the latter’s temper, leaving Sansa and Jon standing together in relative silence.

“I hear you’ve signed up for backstage,” Sansa says, the two of them continue to stare blankly at the patch of grass in front of them.

Jon seems to have been gazing so intently that he didn’t hear her. “Hm? Sorry?”

She turns to him, his red ears and all. “Backstage crew. For the school musical.”

“ _Oh_ ,” says Jon. “ _Oh_ – yes. Yeah. I have.” He runs a hand through his hair. “How’s that going, by the way?”

“Good,” Sansa tells him. “I’m really enjoying it. To be honest with you, though – ” she makes a point of leaning closer, like they’re conspiring – “I’m a bit sick of Harry.”

Jon’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”

“Yeah, he’s just a bit… I don’t know.”

Jon smirks. “He’s in my History class – I know what you mean.”

Sansa smiles. “Got a lot of opinions, hasn’t he?”

“Oh, all of them.”

She giggles.

“The best ones, I find, are unsubstantiated.” Jon crosses his arms. “Doesn’t stop him from sharing them with all of us, though.”

“Oh, absolutely. He’s big on sharing.”

“He’s nothing if not a generous lad.”

And Sansa thinks, to be fair, the statement’s not entirely sarcastic. Harry’s certainly generous with the enthusiasm he’s put into kissing her in rehearsals.

*

Said rehearsals, full of singing and dancing and – underwhelmingly – said kissing, stretch on for another three weeks. Props are built and used, costumes are sewn and fitted (and Sansa can’t help but pore over every stitch of hers; the costumes are always the part she loves most), and with all the necessary moments of grandeur, the set comes together in the theatre for all to see.

Tech week, in all its glory, is just about upon them.

Catelyn’s first response to said tech rehearsals, despite having been through this process several times before, is not encouraging. “Sansa, those are late nights.”

“Dad picks up Arya from fencing after he finishes work, maybe they could…” Sansa fades off, knowing the times don’t quite match up.

Her mother looks strained. Much to Sansa’s relief, Robb swoops in and saves the day, as he is known, always so spectacularly, to do.

“Nonsense,” he says. “Jon’ll drive you. I’ve spoken to him and he’s happy to do it.”

“Oh, but we don’t want to _inconvenience_ Jon – ” Catelyn tries.

Robb’s not having it. “It’s not an inconvenience, Mum – he’s there anyway, doing backstage stuff, and he only lives down the road!”

“I wouldn’t say Watch’s End is _down the road_ – ”

“If anything, it saves petrol.”

“I’ll give you some money to give him, Sansa – ”

“God’s sake, Mum, he won’t take it – ”

“What’s all this racket about, then?” comes Sansa’s father’s voice as the man himself walks in from work, bringing Robb and Catelyn’s stichomythic exchange to a swift end.

“Robb has volunteered Jon Snow as Sansa’s taxi service,” Catelyn tells her husband, leaning her cheek into the kiss he moves to press there.

“It saves a trip if he’s _already with her_ ,” Robb insists. He appeals to his father: “Sansa needs a lift to and from rehearsals for the next couple of weeks, and they’re not finishing up until, like, half-ten. Dad, _you_ taught Jon to drive. You know he’ll be careful.”

Ned turns to Catelyn. “The lad _can_ drive…”

Catelyn raises her eyebrows. “Well, if you’re okay with it…” She stands, pulling her mouth into a thin line and her cardigan closer around herself. “Make sure you say thank you every time, Sansa.”

*

Sansa is almost vigilant about doing just that. On the first night of tech rehearsals, when she sidles up to Jon, bags in hand, ready to leave, they don’t even make it out of the theatre before she’s said her first _thanks for doing this, by the way – it’s a huge help._

Jon shrugs it off. “It’s no trouble, Sansa, really.”

The drive home is punctuated by polite small-talk, about what it is that Jon does – set moving, prop handling – and how Sansa feels the whole thing is going. Jon asks her jokingly if she and Harry have fallen in love and she almost snorts.

“ _No_ – definitely not.”

“Poor him,” says Jon, and when Sansa glances over there’s half a smirk on his face.

She rolls her eyes. “ _Whatever_. He seems to have a girl for every day of the week, and that’s fine to some, but it’s not for _me_ – ”

“Oh, it wasn’t necessarily the romantic dismissal I was talking about,” Jon interrupts.

Sansa raises her eyebrows.

“I mean, yeah, sure, that’s part of it – but I was just thinking that it must suck to be onstage for two hours opposite someone who highlights every mediocre part of you, _especially_ if there’s no real love there.”

The statement, having fallen so frankly, so matter-of-factly, so nonchalantly, from Jon’s mouth, almost makes Sansa gasp – her intake of breath is shaped by the same surprise, but without the sharpness of it.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says. And because, in part, she can’t help but seek further praise – “I don’t do that, do I?”

“At the risk of inflating your ego,” Jon says, “that’s what it seemed like to me.”

“ _Wow_ – well – thank you, Jon.”

“No worries.”

They drive on, Sansa unable to stop a smile.

She thanks him again when he pulls up to her house, and he again reassures her it’s no problem, and they both say they’ll see each other tomorrow.

*

All through the next evening’s run of the show, Sansa thinks about what Jon said. It carries her, bright and bubbling, butterflies in her stomach, through the rehearsal, and when she meets up with him afterwards to drive home again, he raises his eyebrows, a smile tugging at his lips.

“You’re looking chipper for half ten on a Wednesday.”

“I suppose I am,” she says.

“Any particular reason?”

She shakes her head. “Not really.” She puts on an affected voice, “Just the _rush_ of _performing_.”

Jon chuckles. “Right.”

They reach the car and, once inside, Sansa asks if she can choose a radio station.

“Yeah, sure – please.”

“Brilliant!”

She fiddles with the dials a little to find her favourite station and squeals when she hears the song being introduced by the DJ. Jon, again, raises his eyebrows, listening out for the opening notes.

“Oh, this is that – what’s her name – ?”

“Alysanne,” Sansa supplies.

“Yeah, that’s it.” He nods, eyes serious, focused on the road ahead. “I know this one.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You do?”

“’Course I do,” he says. “I love it.”

As it happens, he _doesn’t_ know it, and Sansa also severely doubts he _loves_ it. He mumbles through the first verse, puts on a bit of inarticulate falsetto for the chorus (which she notices despite belting her way through it in the passenger seat), and moves on to the second verse equally out of his depth despite it all.

“Oh, so, you definitely know this song, then?”

He snorts. “I know you’ve been a bit busy with your own rendition, but I’m killing it over here.”

“I agree,” says Sansa. “Killing it dead. Never to be heard – or heard from – again.”

“O- _ho!_ Shattering my self-confidence in one fell swoop. Cheers, Sansa.”

She laughs and jumps right back into the next chorus, loud and confident and melodious. Jon – something of an antithesis – does his bit from the driver’s seat, nothing if not committed. By the time the final chorus rolls around, when the key modulates out of Sansa’s chest register and into a comfortable, full octave above Jon’s, he seems to have mastered it.

They pull to a stop at a light and Sansa shoots him a glance. “Not bad by the end there, Jon. Word-perfect, in tune.”

“Well, y’know, I _do_ love Alysanne.”

Sansa feels her lips quirk up, unable to help herself. “Next thing I know you’ll be onstage and I’ll be shuffling the set around.”

Jon laughs. “I can’t promise I’d look as good in your costume.”

“Harry’s, then.”

She says it without thinking, but part of her looks across at him, tinted red by the stoplight, faint stubble on his seventeen-year-old chin, and she wishes he was her Florian.

It’s stupid, and she’s shocked by the fact it even crosses her mind – he’s Robb’s mate, doing him a solid; he’s probably got ten thousand other places to be, like with that Val girl, the Scottish one who represents Britain in orienteering, which Sansa didn’t even know was a sport until she asked Arya about it – because Val is seventeen and she’s got that lovely silver hair and she’s always _looking_ at Jon. He’d probably much rather be out with her than carting Sansa home, so there’s no way he’d ever have even possibly been her Florian – it’s just…

He’s always pleasant to her, and he’s got that unassuming smile, that upward turn of his softly curved, full lips. (She’s never given much thought to lips, really, but she’s recently been acquainted with one particular pair – permanently pursed, almost hard ridges against her own – and for all the hype, kissing Harry Hardyng really does feel like nothing. She could bump elbows with him and get more out of it. And – yes – she understands that that’s why it’s _acting_ , and she doesn’t _really_ have to have any kind of feelings about Harry pressing his lips to hers, but that’s been a hard fate to accept since he tried to stick his tongue down her throat in the first rehearsal. Oh, God. She’s so glad Jon wasn’t there to see that.)

When she shakes herself back to the present – determinedly not thinking about Harry’s lips, or hers, or, heaven forbid, _Jon’s_ – the boy is nodding. “I think the sword would fulfil some childhood dreams, definitely.”

*

Every ride home gets lighter, smoother, easier; Sansa finds that Jon’s witty once you’ve warmed him up. Now she knows why Robb’s so fond of him, why Arya insisted on an attachment at the hip for so long.

*

On Saturday night, just as Sansa’s second big duet with Harry winds to a close, he pulls her in for their equally second, equally big, scripted kiss. It lives up to, and surpasses, its name.

When Sansa reaches the wings, Alys Karstark sweeps over from where she was stood at the props table with Jon. “What was _that_?”

“Oh,” Sansa replies, raising sardonic eyebrows, “d’you mean the display that’d probably get him re-Christened by my sister as ‘Handsy Hardyng’?”

Alys nods, a kind of bitter smile on her face, and Sansa shrugs.

“I think someone said he was in a fight with Cissy.”

“So he’s trying to pique her jealousy by exposing you to his washing machine technique?!”

There’s a clatter from the props table, where Jon’s just knocked over a pile of marionette puppets, the ones set out for the frame narrative that open and close the show. Alys and Sansa both turn and he waves them off, red-eared and smiling sheepishly.

Sansa sighs, placing her hand over the one of Alys’s that rests on the curve of her shoulder. “It’s just stupid,” she says. “I’d better go – Palla will be waiting to help me change costumes.”

Alys nods and moves to return to her place beside Jon. “Just tell me if Harry does that again, won’t you?”

“Sure,” Sansa tells her. “Of course.”

They finish the run, and, following performance notes, the rehearsal adjourns. Sansa returns her mic pack, sheds her costume, peels off her fake eyelashes (but leaves the rest), and she runs into Jon in the corridor just outside the girls’ dressing room.

“You ready to go?” he asks.

“If you are,” she replies, and they’re buckled into his car within minutes.

She goes to turn on the radio – with any luck they’ll run into an Alysanne song and Jon can enthusiastically embarrass himself again – but Jon instead opens his mouth and speaks, and Sansa pauses in her tracks.

“So, uh – Harry. I saw what happened earlier.”

Her gut clenches, leaden. “Yeah, well…” she sighs. “I guess that’s just part of the show, isn’t it?”

Jon’s gaze on the road is dark. “Well, if – if he pulls a stunt like that again, I’ll have a word.”

“Oh, with Harry, will you?”

He nods.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“And you don’t have to get groped for the sake of someone else’s spat, Sansa.”

He glances over at her and Sansa feels the world almost go silent; there’s something in his eyes that tells her he means this, and wants her to know, and won’t push it further but needs the words said. It’s _care_ , she realises. It’s care, that inarticulable intensity of his. She smiles back, not wanting to shatter the quiet.

(Despite her insistence, and despite the fact she’s unlikely to ever know he’s done it, Jon _does_ have a word with Harry Hardyng. The very next day.

It starts as an off-hand remark and then suddenly Jon is staring him in the face – admittedly having to look up somewhat to do so, because for all his arrogance and aquilinity, Harry’s built like Polykleitos’s _Doryphoros_ – insisting, in no uncertain terms, that whatever’s going on offstage should not influence what’s happening _on_ it. Harry makes some quip, wondering just how many _rides_ Jon has given Sansa, and all that stops Jon from hitting him is the knowledge that those rides – innuendo aside – would be called off altogether if he did. There’s no way Catelyn Stark would let her daughter in a car with someone facing suspension. She probably barely agreed to the idea in the first place.

So Jon doesn’t hit Harry, and Sansa is none the wiser.)

“D’you want to know something sad?” she says after a moment, fiddling with the hem of her jumper.

Jon groans. “You’re not going to tell me you actually fancy him, are you?”

“No! Heavens no!” she squeals. Her disgusted laughter chimes through the car like a bell, and the low timbre of Jon’s chuckle joins it a moment later. “He’s definitely awful.”

“Okay,” Jon notes, and he’s smiling. “Glad we clarified that.”

“What I was going to say – the _real_ tragedy of all this – ” She sighs, and then: “oh, God, this is going to sound stupid...”

“I’m sure it won’t.”

“Alright, well – ever since I was a little kid I imagined my first kiss to be this cinematic, romantic, _exciting_ thing, with someone I really liked and who really liked me. And what’s so sad about this whole thing is that instead…” She sighs again. “I got Harry.”

“You got Harry,” Jon repeats.

“I mean, it’s a _show_ , I’m always acting and I’ve always wanted to play Jonquil – and I knew she kissed Florian – and this was _the dream_. And, obviously, on the surface, Harry fits into the idea… but… I don’t know, Jon, was it stupid of me to want that?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Was it stupid of you to want to kiss somebody you’d actually chosen? No, of course not.” It’s quiet a moment, and then, as they pull up to a stoplight, he adds: “This is only the first person you’re kissing, anyway. You’ve got the rest of your life to kiss people you like and who like you back.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How about _you_ , then?” Sansa asks, and it’s only when Jon flinches that she realises how it sounds.

“How about me..?”

“I _meant_ – who do _you_ like? Who likes _you_ back?”

He lets out a deep breath, one hand flexing on the steering wheel and the other running through his hair. “Uh, nobody. ‘No’ on both accounts.”

Sansa considers it, not quite believing the prospect. Despite the reputation he has for sullenness, and a proven propensity for pouting, Jon is kind. He’s quick-witted, and reliable, and earnest. He’s _handsome_ – especially when he smiles, and _most_ especially when he smiles at _her_. Plenty of people are bound to think the same things Sansa does, and more so, and they’ll definitely fancy Jon. She ponders it a few more seconds, and a list of names spring to mind.

“What about Alys?”

Jon snorts. “Do you know how many times people have mistaken her for my sister?”

“You’ve got to admit, though – people who look related get together all the time – ”

He shakes his head. “I’ve also just set her up with one of the orienteering lads, so if either of us fancied each other that’d be a bit counterproductive.”

“Speaking of orienteering, then – how about Val?”

“ _Val?_ ” Jon gapes. “Um – _what?_ ”

“She stares at you,” Sansa insists, trying to keep her cool. “I thought I’d ask.”

“No, I – uh – _no_.” Jon shakes his head again, firmly. “She’s great, and we’re friendly if we see each other around, but – no. Very different people. That wouldn’t work.”

Sansa shoots him a sidelong glance. “They do say ‘opposites attract’.”

This earns her a half-smile and a scoff.

“Pertaining to hobbies and personality types, sure. Core beliefs? Desired lifestyle? I think that’s pushing it.”

She leans back into her seat with a hum of agreement. “That was quite a pearl of wisdom.”

“Ah, well, I can’t profess to knowing a lot, but I reckon I’ve got a clue or two.” He taps his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Now – I haven’t had dinner and Theon nicked half my lunch because he’s a headcase – d’you want to go through McDonald’s?”

Catelyn had, of course, sent her daughter off in the morning with dinner clasped in a tupperware container, but Sansa ate it as soon as school finished, so she’s near famished now. “Oh! Yes, please. That’d be great.”

He chuckles, and, for good measure, reaches out and turns the radio on, asking Sansa which station it is that she likes again.

*

The following stretch of days brings with it the last of the tech runs, and as Jon drives Sansa home, conversation moves, as is perhaps to be expected, to Wednesday’s opening performance. It’s Jon who asks how Sansa’s feeling about it. Her response appears to take him somewhat by surprise.

“Honestly? I’m thanking God.”

Jon glances over at her, eyebrows raised. “That excited for people to see it?”

“Oh, it’s more than that,” says Sansa. “I mean, yes, of course, but – really – I don’t know if my voice would hold out for six shows in four days if we were doing any more rehearsals.”

His eyes flick back to her again, then return to the road. “Oh – right. I can imagine how taxing those solos are.”

“They’re the _absolute most fun_ ,” Sansa insists, “it’s just – they’re not easy to sing. And I want to sound perfect every time.”

“Of course,” Jon says, nodding. “And you deserve to. You sound fantastic.” He shoots her another look when she only rolls her eyes in response. “Seriously, you do.”

She grins at him. “Oh, well, thanks, Jon.” Turning a little in her seat to look at him better, she asks, “Are _you_ looking forward to opening?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, I’m not doing what you’re doing, at _all_ , but I like helping the pieces of it fit together. And Alys is fun to have around in the interim.” She wags her eyebrows in an attempt to irritate him, and the exasperated sigh she gets in return proves she’s succeed. “Oh, stop, not like _that_.”

“I know,” Sansa says, smug. “And since you pointed it out to me the other day I _can_ absolutely see why people would think you were siblings.”

Jon sends her a glance as though saying _oh? Go on._

“You’ve got very similar colouring,” she explains. “And because of all the time you’ve spent together, you’re familiar with each other. In a decidedly _platonic_ way.”

He laughs at that. “Right.”

He drops her home via a celebratory detour to the McDonald’s drive-thru, and, come Thursday night, everything comes to actualisation.

*

The first day of shows starts with a matinee for students of local schools; for the most part, they laugh and clap and cheer in all the right places. Every time Sansa and Harry kiss there’s uproarious whooping, which cushions the subtle _boo_ that could come from no one but Arya and Robb. Because the invitations were extended to primary and intermediate schools as well as their own, Rickon and Bran come along, too. They are, at least, nonpartisan enough not to protest.

That night, Sansa’s parents come to the show – each year, they see her opening and closing nights. The opening leaves them very congratulatory of her, and, though they are often hesitant to use the exact word, very _proud_.

She meets kindness at school the next day, and several teachers who tell her they will be in the audience that night. The general positivity and enjoyment continues to flow through Thursday’s performance – though she almost doesn’t finish a quick-change in time – and through Friday’s – in which Harry forgets a line and she has to cover for him.

Saturday rolls around too early. Sansa loathes it.

The matinee is relatively quiet, as the general demographic is either ends of the age spectrum. Her solos are well-received, though, and Sansa is very personally content with that. And on the brightest of sides, she’s only got to kiss Harry three more times in her entire life – so there’s that.

In between shows, she gets dinner with Alys and Jon rather than her friends in the cast, simply in the interest of trying to keep her food – and therefore her breath – as neutral as possible. She hopes Harry will be as considerate.

“You’re coming to mine tonight, aren’t you, Sansa?” Alys asks, when Sansa’s halfway through possibly the best salad of her young life. “The Cast Party Which Shouldn’t Be Called That Because All The Crew’s Invited Too?”

“Of course,” says Sansa, smiling at the name. “I’ll ask Robb if – ”

“I’ll drive you,” Jon interrupts, as though it’s the most casual thing in the world. “If that’s what you were going to say. I don’t mind at all.”

“Oh! That’d be great.”

Alys, eyes twinkling, glances back to Sansa from Jon. “Brilliant!”

They return to the theatre shortly after that for Sansa’s earlier call time. She signs in, bids them adieu, and heads into the girls’ dressing room, where she removes what’s left of her makeup and reapplies it so to feel the best she can for the final show. She brushes through her hair while one of the ensemble girls blasts Alysanne hits from her phone and then finds Palla, who helps her with styling her hair and does up the ties at the back of Sansa’s dress.

Once she’s head to toe perfect, and each step in her Jonquil heels gives a satisfying, round click, she congregates with the rest of the cast in the green room for warm-ups. The dance captain leads her warm-up, and Sansa can’t help but cherish the last time each stretch and jump causes the layers of satin and silk in her skirt to swirl around her legs, soft and light. The vocal warm-up is full of trills, word games, and different interval exercises that the backstage crew, on the other side of the room clad all in black, mimic silently. Sansa catches Jon’s eye midway through one of his impressions and gives him a grin, which he returns.

There are a few words shared by the production team, congratulating each student on their involvement and celebrating the end of the season, and then the cast is dispersed. Sansa gets her mic checked again and then heads to the wings, where she waits for the show to begin and the curtain to open on the frame narrative’s first, gigantic musical number.

The show passes in a flash, interval coming and going, alight with love and relief and nerves, and as much as she tries to commit it to memory, all that comes back to Sansa is a series of moments: the highest note of the harmony in “Maidenpool”; the combination of colours in the stage lights as she dashes across them; Harry winding his arms around her, pressing his lips to her hair; the empty-yet-full black of the audience and the single white light of the sound desk as she belts right out into it all; the twirling of the tree as she sits in its nook, singing to Harry, knowing that Cley Cerwyn is hunched inside the structure, right under her, spinning it almost blindly; the triumphant final note of the show, in which the music swells, the ensemble sings, and she rushes to Harry once more, feeling the applause rise and the curtain come down, the lights go out, all through the veil of her shut eyes as she kisses him for the last time.

It’s a strange feeling heading backstage after that. A few tears escape her, overwhelmed and sad that she doesn’t get to do this forever when it makes her the happiest she’s ever been.

She changes out of her last costume, makes sure all the others are sorted into the bags as ordered by the SM, and pulls on her outfit for the cast party (“Which Shouldn’t Be Called That…” echoes Alys’s refrain). She’s got so many bags it’s not even funny – makeup and clothes and hairspray and a full container of lemon cakes which she baked in her only free time this week, as a thank you to Jon for being such a willing taxi service. She clears her spot at the dressing table, turns off her light, and hurries out into the green room, where she already hears a milling crowd.

Almost as soon as she spots them, she’s wrapped quickly up into a hug from both of her parents. Catelyn murmurs her pride, once more, and Ned his joy at seeing Sansa so happy.

Robb lumbers up and circles his arms around her, firm and strong, and when he pulls back he produces a bouquet of flowers she can tell he bought from the supermarket en route. _I got you a bottle of that sickly wine you like, too_ , he whispers, leaning back in. _It’s in the car – sing out when you leave._ Sansa squeezes his hand as she takes the flowers and he winks as though telling her not to mention it.

The hug she gets from Arya is fleeting, but she mutters a _you were a perfect Jonquil, Sansa_ and perhaps that’s a victory in itself. (Part of her, still raw from years of barbs from her younger sister, searches for derision in it.)

Rickon jumps on her, squeezing her tight, and Bran’s beaming at her from his wheelchair when she lets the smaller boy down again. Sansa holds him close, feeling the reciprocation of his thin arms – growing ever ganglier, even now, nigh on twelve years old, stretching every day into a teenage boy whose height will never get to dwarf his older siblings.

“Do you think Harry was good enough?” she asks quietly, against his ear. “In your expert opinion?”

He laughs. “It’d be difficult to find a high school boy who could play a proper Florian.” She goes to move away, but Bran keeps his hold on her. “You felt like the real hero, Sansa,” he murmurs. “Harry couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

She pulls back, kissing his forehead, as another cast parent brushes past her and says _wonderful performance, Sansa – what a voice you have!_ She beams at them, chiming back her gratitude, as Robb wipes lipstick residue from Bran’s forehead with his thumb.

“So what’s the situation with this after-match function?” Ned asks, keys to his people-mover now in hand.

“It’s at Alys’s house,” Sansa confirms. “Alys Karstark. It’s out near – ”

“ – Near the river, isn’t it? With all those trees around?” Ned surmises, nodding. Sansa repeats the motion. “Rickard Karstark’s a contractor of mine; he mentioned they were out that way.”

“Do any of your friends want to come along with us?” Catelyn asks. “We’ve got a seat free in the car.”

Ned and Sansa reply simultaneously:

_Oh, love, Jon’s said he’ll take her._

_Jon’ll drive me._

Catelyn’s eyebrows quirk up. “Oh, but you don’t want to put him out, Sansa – ”

“ – He’s going anyway, Mum,” says Sansa, as Robb says, “I’ve talked to him and he told me it was no trouble.”

“Won’t he be wanting to… have a – a few beers? Or something?”

Catelyn turns to Robb, who tells her, “He might have one or two, but – Mum, Jon’s the most responsible out of all of us.” As if to convince his mother further, Robb adds, “If I were to choose who’d be driving Sansa to and from a party at half ten and God-knows-what on a Saturday night – myself included – I’d choose Jon.”

The boy in question chooses this moment to enter the conversation, with a warm _cheers, Robb_ from behind Sansa.

“Here he is!” Ned pronounces, clapping a hand on Jon’s back. “The man behind the Maidenpool!”

Jon smiles, the special, reverent, glowing one reserved for Ned. “I take it you all enjoyed the show, then? Sansa was fantastic, as ever.”

Catelyn has no way to counteract that, and instead says, “yes, we thought it was phenomenal.”

“Certainly sounded that way from behind the scenes,” Jon replies.

Arya mutters something in Bran’s ear along the lines of “why’s he laying it on so thick? More buttering up than on a slice of toast.” Sansa elbows her. Arya pokes her tongue out.

“ _Well_ ,” Ned says, and they’re called back to attention. “Perhaps we’d all best head off, then.”

Catelyn tries to relieve Sansa of at least one of her bags, but the girl won’t allow it – in one she’s got a change of clothes, and her makeup (and, more importantly, her makeup _wipes_ ), and in the other are Jon's lemon cakes and she’s _not_ explaining that in front of Arya. She does, however, let her mother take Robb’s flowers, so that they don’t even begin to wilt in the car. Always a lover of pretty things, Sansa wants to keep them as long as she can.

She kisses her parents goodbye in the car park, squeezing Bran and Rickon again around the shoulders, and then she and Jon follow Robb – and Arya, who insisted upon riding with her brother – to retrieve Sansa’s sparkling moscato. Jon distracts Arya as they carry out the actual hand-over, because, although unspoken by Robb, Jon, and Sansa, all three know she wouldn’t be able to keep something like this from their parents in the heat of a perceived injustice.

When Sansa’s zipped up her duffle bag, now a bottle of wine heavier, Robb gives Jon a thumbs up and squeezes Sansa around the shoulders with his other arm.

“Have fun,” he says. “Don’t get too plastered. You’re only a baby after all.”

“Of course not.”

Jon, with Arya on his back, joins them just as Robb closes the boot of the car. “We off then, Sansa?”

“Sure are.”

Robb and Arya climb into one car, Jon and Sansa walk a little way to reach the other, and then they’re all on their way.

*

“Thanks for showering me in compliments in front of my parents,” Sansa jokes, glancing sidelong at Jon as they drive.

“I meant them,” he tells her. At her silence, he flicks a look in her direction. “ _Please_ , Sansa – you _know_ you’re talented.”

She beams despite her efforts not to, shaking her head. “You’re too nice, Jon.”

“No such thing.”

After a moment of humming a residual melody from her Act I solo, a thought pops into Sansa’s head. “How’d my dad know you said you’d drive me?”

Jon’s eyebrows shoot into his hair. “I – texted him about it. Just thought it’d be easier.”

She nods. “Yeah – of course.” Worrying her lip, she adds, “Um – look – I know Robb’s probably put you _in charge_ of me, or something, tonight – but I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have fun because you have to look after me.”

Jon shakes his head, a soft smile on his lips. “I think your parents would murder me if I didn’t keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, please – my dad _adores_ you.”

“And your mother?” he asks, as though trying to prove her wrong.

“That’s nothing personal. She’d murder _Robb_ if I looked too close to _blowing my nose_ under his care,” Sansa insists.

He smirks. “Sure.” They turn a corner, and Jon starts afresh: “I promise I won’t – _coddle_ you, or anything, but I’d be an arse if I wasn’t watching out for you, regardless of your parents or Robb or whoever.”

“Thanks, Jon.” And to lighten the mood when sincerity settles in, she adds, “I’ll watch out for you, too.”

Jon lets out a chuckle. “Cheers, Sansa.”

*

It’s not long before they’re separated – Alys scoops Jon up and Sansa’s caught in the middle of several dance circles. As with any cast party, there’s a juxtaposition of delight and disappointment that pervades the whole thing. Sansa pours herself a plastic cup full of wine and tracks Alys down again to find out which fridge is safe to store the bottle in without worrying it’ll get pinched.

“This one’s the best option,” the girl tells her, showing her down the hallway to the garage, where there’s a spare one, still-running and stocked with food. “Use that shelf,” Alys says, pointing to the empty space in the door beside two bottles of beer Sansa’s father likes.

“Thanks for this,” says Sansa.

“No, it’s no trouble,” Alys insists, rubbing a circle on Sansa’s back with her hand. “Just don’t tell anyone – though only your wine and Jon’s beer’s in there, so it’s your loss if you do.”

“Right.”

“ _Right_ ,” Alys echoes, and then she’s off again.

Sansa sighs, leaning against the wall of the corridor and taking a sip of her drink. The song that’s reverberating from the living room is one she likes, so she hums along, enjoying the moment of solitude. (Which is then – as though fated – abruptly interrupted by the appearance of Jon.)

“Hey,” he says, pausing on his way down the hall when he notices her.

“Hey,” she repeats.

“How’s it going?”

His hair’s a bit worse for wear, and his face is redder than usual, which makes Sansa thinks he’s been dancing. She wonders what kind of dancer he is.

“Good,” she tells him. “And you?”

“Good, yeah.” He points down the corridor. “I was just gonna grab another beer – d’you – ?”

“I’ll come on the reconnaissance mission,” Sansa says, lifting herself off the wall and into a standing position, “why not?”

They wander back to the garage and, without endeavouring to turn on the light, Jon plucks a beer from the shelf beside Sansa’s wine. He twists the top off and lobs it into the open bin to the left of the fridge. The two of them fall into comfortable leans, Sansa against the threshold and Jon against the now-closed fridge, his bottle-free hand in his pocket.

“My dad drinks those,” Sansa tells him as he takes a sip. “But Robb doesn’t like them much.”

Jon smirks. “Why d’you think I drink them?”

Sansa giggles at that. “To be fair,” she says, “Robb would nick _anything_ in two seconds if he even half liked it.”

Jon nods, raising his bottle in her direction.

“He steals Rickon’s chicken nuggets sometimes,” Sansa informs him anecdotally. “You do _not_ want to be there for that battle.”

“I imagine it’s quite evenly matched.”

“It _is_!” Sansa laughs.

Jon takes another sip of beer and Sansa mimics him with her wine. Unsure as to what possesses her to do it – perhaps it’s the strange excitement of being in Alys’s darkened garage with Jon, of all people, watching the lights from neighbouring houses peek in through the one window and illuminate him, orange as only foreign, late-night bulbs can be – she holds out her cup to him. “Swapsies?”

He pauses, eyes darting to her face. “You won’t like this,” he says, holding the bottle out nonetheless.

“You’re probably right,” she acknowledges, but that doesn’t stop her from reaching out and taking the beer as Jon reaches out for her plastic cup. “I don’t know that you’ll like that either.”

Jon takes his sip first, swallowing with a wince. “That’s sickly, Sansa.”

She laughs at him.

“It’s not _awful_ , but it’s just – ” He sticks his tongue out, expression clear he didn’t overly enjoy it. “It’s all _sugar_.”

“It’s a very Sansa drink,” she agrees, and takes a swig from Jon’s beer, feeling his eyes on her. It’s, as predicted, awful. She almost gags. Shaking her head firmly, she tells him, “Yeah, I don’t like that much at _all_.”

Chuckling at her, he takes the bottle back and returns her cup. “You’re just like your brother.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows, looking down at herself. “Not last I checked.”

Jon sips his beer, probably to wash the wine taste out of his mouth. His eyes catch hers as both sets flick back up. “No,” he mutters. “No, you’re not.”

Palla comes rushing down the hallway then, spotting Sansa and Jon despite their standing in relative darkness. She grabs Sansa and exclaims, “You’ve got to come and dance! They’ve got the Alysanne dressing room anthem on!” When her eyes fall on Jon, she seems to hesitate a moment: “Look, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but Sansa, you’ve got to!”

Sansa glances over to Jon, who gives her a small smile. “You’ve _got to_ ,” he repeats.

“I’ll see you later,” she tells him.

He’s not there when she returns.

Sansa refills her cup of wine and decides instead to go and investigate the scene outside. Thankfully, nobody’s smoking, so the evening air is fresh and crisp, just on the bearable side of cold. She settles into a nice spot where she can watch the stars and still hear the music from inside, tuning everything else out.

Around midnight, Harry joins her, taking up residence on another of the plastic chairs in the garden. His blond mop of hair is slightly mussed, and he looks less surly than usual. “’Lo, Sansa,” he says, raising his beer bottle to her as he sits down.

“Hello, Harry.”

She takes a sip of her wine, sickly sweet but with a subtle heat that catches in her throat on the way down. She wonders if perhaps she should say more, but decides not to – Harry’s approached her, after all. The onus of continuing the conversation should be on him.

Fortunately, after a few more silent swigs (and, on Sansa’s part, an investigation of the moonlight over the garden), there’s a change in the song echoing from the living room. Harry hoots upon recognition of it.

“This is a classic!” He jumps up, empty beer bottle rolling across the grass, forgotten. “Dance with me, Sansa?”

She smiles at him but shakes her head. “I’m okay just here.”

“ _Please_ ,” he insists. “Come on, you’ll break my heart.”

“I might.”

“ _Sansa_ ,” he whines, vowels extended in his own kind of drunk melody. “ _Please_.”

With a sigh, she relents. “Alright, then.”

She sets her cup on the flat, wooden edge of a nearby flower patch and jumps up to join him. It is, she’ll admit, a good song. They dance together a while, singing along, and then the song begins to fade. Harry doesn’t give her a chance to retreat, though; instead, he takes her hand.

“I want to say sorry.”

“For what, in particular?” Sansa asks.

“I’m an arse,” he says, and he wraps his arms around her. He’s far taller than she is, and in a way it feels quite nice, with the garden’s early spring chill, to be enveloped in the solidity of him. (Plus, he’s drunk to the point of vulnerability, so it’s not as though she feels threatened by the situation.) “You’ve done well to put up with me, Sansa.”

“Well, what am I good at, if not acting?”

He takes a moment, and then laughs, though she hears it rather than sees it. “You’re a witty one, Stark.”

“I’m a lot of things.”

“You _are_ ,” he agrees, and there’s still the faint hint of a chuckle there. “Y’know, in another life, it’s probably you and me, isn’t it?”

Sansa raises her eyebrows, leaning back to look up at him. “Mm, that’ll be the other life we just finished performing onstage, I think.”

“I suppose you’re right there.” He breaks into a grin that shows off his perfect teeth. “One last kiss, then, for old times’ sake?”

Half-jokingly, he starts leaning down, and Sansa dodges out of his embrace. “No thanks, Harry. I’m good.” She retrieves her cup of wine. “You’ve got Cissy, y’know. And Saffron, apparently.”

Harry nods. “She’s hot.”

Sansa laughs, shaking her head at him. “You’re horrible.”

“Probably.” He looks around, locates his lost beer bottle – not forgotten after all – and picks it up. “I’d better bin this.”

“Yes – good call.”

“Well… catch ya, Sansa.”

“Bye, Harry.”

Sansa sits outside a while longer, enjoying the music that floats out into the garden without having to participate too directly in the party at large. Myranda Royce, who had played one of Jonquil’s closest friends, wanders out to meet her as a particularly melancholy song wraps up.

“Harry said you were out here,” she says.

“And, indeed, I am.”

They share a smile and wordlessly begin a turn around the garden.

“You didn’t have a last hurrah-type hookup out here, did you?” Myranda asks. “Harry said something about kissing you.”

Sansa laughs. “No, of course not.” And, knowing how much Myranda envied her onstage romance, she adds, “You’re welcome to swoop in and take my place, if you like. If you don’t mind sharing with Cissy and Saffron.”

There are shouts and screams from inside as a new song kicks off, and Myranda leaves Sansa’s comment alone.

“Bet it’s Brightside,” she says, when their peers’ live accompaniment becomes too loud and mangled to discern exactly what this new tune might be.

Sansa laughs. “That or Wonderwall.”

Whatever it is, the noise is sustained and she and Myranda don’t figure it out. Instead, they wander down to the edge of the garden, talking through the usual post-production script of how they can’t believe it’s finished, how strongly the show will be missed, and how many rounds of cast parties will be carried out compared to the previous year.

On their meandering stroll back to the house, Myranda informs Sansa of who inside has had the most to drink, and who she thinks has already kissed who. Again, Sansa voices her support of Myranda’s pursuit of Harry, just to clear the air of the past few months.

Then Jon approaches them, suddenly, a slight shake to him.

“Hey, Sansa,” he says, and Sansa can feel Myranda’s eyes burning into her, but she can’t bring herself to address what the reason behind that might be.

Jon’s left cheek seems to bloom burgundy as Sansa watches him – perhaps a trick of the low light in the garden. He lifts a tender hand to run it through his curls, knuckles washed an undeniable red. “Would you – uh – is it alright if we go?”

It’s half past one and she’s had her obligatory Deep-and-Meaningful, and though Sansa’s half-tempted to tell him she’d actually like to stay, just in case things pick up again, what’s left of her stage makeup feels slippery and hot and her throat hurts and more importantly Jon looks like someone might’ve hit him, or he might’ve hit someone, or perhaps judging by his lip – plump as though swollen – he might’ve been _kissing_ somebody – oh, God, who could it have been? Myranda would’ve told her if she knew, wouldn’t she? – but, the point is, he _wants to leave_ , and he’s got his car, and he’s Robb’s best friend who she’s already inconvenienced enough, so she nods.

“Sure, Jon. We’ll go.”

Following a hug between Sansa and Myranda, they do just that.

“I’m sorry,” Jon tells Sansa, when they’ve left the house and are trudging across the front lawn to the footpath, bound for his car, parked on the curb a few driveways down. “If you wanted to stay, sorry for pulling you away.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows. “No, it’s alright. It had got a bit quiet, anyway.”

Jon seems to shake his head at that, a mirthful sigh escaping him, as though she’s wrong, or perhaps lying, but he doesn’t say anything. It _had_ been quiet, that one big resurgence notwithstanding – though he hadn’t been outside with her, and there had seemed to be something going on in the lounge when they snuck down the adjacent corridor to the front door, but Sansa chalked that up to it being the source of the music meant to sustain the whole bottom floor of the house. It had the highest concentration of people, and from the shouts that she’d heard, as well as the cheering, people were having a good time in there. Jon might have been in there. She hadn’t seen him in a while anyway, before he’d come up to her and asked to go.

A thought comes to her suddenly, and she turns to Jon in the same instant: “You’re alright to drive, right? You were drinking earlier.”

Jon’s eyes go wide. “Oh! No! I – uh – I haven’t had a drink since you left me in the garage. I’m good.”

“Okay, great.” Sansa nods, trusting him. “Just had to check.”

“No, of course you had to – it’s the first question to ask.” He pauses a moment. “D’you seriously think I’d ask you to leave with me if I couldn’t trust myself driving?”

Sansa’s stomach jolts. “No!” she insists. “No, of course I don’t – I just – ”

He laughs. “Not only would that be risking my safety, your safety, and the safety of anyone else on road, it’d be risking incurring _Catelyn Stark’s wrath_.”

Sansa laughs at that, too, pleased she hadn’t unintentionally hurt his feelings.

“Seriously, your mother’s phenomenal, Sansa, but she’s _terrifying_.”

They get to the car, and when they’ve climbed in and buckled up, Jon turns on the radio. Sansa goes to change it, but she doesn’t have to, because even though they hadn’t listened to the radio en route, it’s already on _6.04_ , just how she likes it.

Jon trades suburbia for a main road and says, “McDonald’s?”

She pauses in humming along to the radio to say _I love you, Jon_ , and he presses his lips together, suppressing a smile that’s already reached his eyes.

*

Under the white, industrial lighting of the drive-thru, Jon’s condition is thrown into sharp relief. It _is_ a bruise, on his cheek, and his lip’s not only swollen, but a deeper pink than usual, and – oh, God – it _is_ blood dried on his fingers. The contrast between his physical appearance and his gentle _thank you_ to the cashier is a dichotomy if Sansa’s ever seen one.

“With all due respect, Jon,” Sansa begins, chewing and swallowing a French fry before continuing, “what _did_ happen to your face?”

“I – uh – it’s nothing, Sansa, don’t worry.” (But he’d blanched as he tried to wipe his face, so she _does_.)

“It looks like there’s blood on your hands. Which is almost as melodramatic as you keeping all quiet and stoic about the reason why.”

He sighs into a faint smile and Sansa looks at him again, once more, analysing it all, before she leans into the back seat, unzipping her bag and locating makeup wipes. She sets her takeaway bag on the dashboard, fries tucked in her lap for easy access, and hands a wipe to Jon before taking one out for herself.

“Uh – thank you?”

“It’ll clean up your hands,” she explains, opening the sun visor and beginning to wipe her makeup off in its small mirror.

Jon flicks on the ceiling dash light so she’s not working in the dark, and then spares a glance down at his own makeup wipe. He half-shrugs and alternates hands on the steering wheel to wipe both clean.

“I’m not going to tell Mum, or Dad, or whoever you’re worried about me telling.”

Jon sighs again. “Sansa, it’s not that – believe me. It’s… it’s nothing.”

Sansa retrieves her fries and takeaway bag, snapping up the visor as she turns to him. “Jon. Come on. _Seriously_. You either got in a fight, or you were having the wildest hookup of your life, and I respect that, but you’ve gotta be straight with me.”

He simultaneously laughs and coughs. “I – uh – no. No, I wasn’t hooking up with anyone. Definitely not. _No_. I – uh – I got into a fight with Ramsay Bolton.”

Sansa can’t help a gasp. “Ramsay _Bolton_? _He_ was there?!”

“He _was_ ,” says Jon. “Alys didn’t invite him – don’t worry – but she couldn’t get rid of him.”

A shudder goes up Sansa’s back retrospectively. She doesn’t like Ramsay; she doesn’t know anyone who does. He’s an entitled – and dangerously _unpredictable_ – bag of hybrid sleaze- and scum-. He’d tormented Theon for ages, and Theon’s the most unfazed person Sansa knows, so that’s saying something.

“What?” she finds herself spluttering. “Are you – _what?!_ ”

“Well,” he says, ghost of a mirthless smile on his face, “the easiest explanation for it is that he was being his usual bastard self, and I happened to be there to hear it.”

“I can’t believe this.” Sansa sips her McDonald’s drink, carbonated and sweet and probably too much for two in the morning. “Well, I mean, no, that’s not true – I _can_ believe it, because _of course_ you’re a superhero – ” She bites her tongue, aware of how the wine may have loosened it. “He must’ve said something awful for you to hit him the way you seem to have.”

Jon is silent, and she’s forced enough out of him already, so Sansa doesn’t pursue it.

“Come in,” she says instead, after a moment of quiet between them. “When you drop me off. You can clean yourself up, have a shower, take some ibuprofen – whatever you need.”

Jon gives another pained smile in spite of himself. “The last thing your mum would want at half past two on a Sunday morning is me blundering through your house, making a spectacle of myself.”

“Robb’s done it enough times.”

“Rubbish – he’s come to mine.”

“Theon, then.”

“I don’t _really_ want to be comparable to Theon.” Jon lets out a sigh. “No – I ought to get home – Aemon’ll worry if he doesn’t hear me banging about.”

Sansa worries her lip. “If you’re sure…”

“Yeah, no, I’m good – don’t worry about me.”

She grins over at him. “After tonight I’m not sure I can help it.”

*

They pull up outside Sansa’s house and Sansa goes to turn the radio off, but Jon waves her away. “It’s alright,” he says, “I like it.”

She snorts. “ _You_ like _Alysanne_?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve always loved her.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows.

“She’s grown on me,” he admits. “Oh – don’t worry about that,” he adds when she goes to bundle up her McDonald’s bag, “I’ll bin it.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She pulls her backpack up from where it had been stealing her leg room and unzips it, producing a hefty Tupperware container of lemon cakes before she can forget. Jon’s got raised eyebrows when she looks up at him, making to hand the sweets over.

“It’s a thank you for driving me,” she explains. And because Robb had told her the occasion was nigh – “and it’s an early happy birthday.”

Jon colours in the low light. “Well – uh – thank – _thank you_ , Sansa. I really appreciate it.”

She smiles at that, and what wine she’s had convinces her to lean over and kiss his cheek, perhaps a little too close to his mouth. (Sansa’s not to know that he wishes he’d turned or that she’d moved further or that he hates himself for wanting both.)

Then she unbuckles her seatbelt, and sets the lemon cakes on the dash, and Jon reaches into the back to scoop up her other bag (full of makeup and costume leftovers) as she does so, and he hands it to her, and she hops out. She pauses, left hand hooked over the top of the open passenger door, both bags circled in the crook of her right elbow. “Guess I’ll see you around, then?”

He’s so handsome, even with that bruise on his cheek and his wild, inky curls, and the red on his knuckles that might be Ramsay Bolton’s blood, but which might also be his. He’s so handsome, giving her that unassuming smile, one hand hung over the steering wheel. He’s so handsome always, really, and for a second she wants to climb back into the car and ask if they can drive around the rest of the night, with McDonald’s wrappers and her stale face and his battle scars.

“Yeah,” says Jon. _She’ll see him around._ “Yeah, I’ll be... we’ll see each other.”

*

(And they do, of course, but it’s always a little bit different. Never quite the same as the two of them driving through the dark with Sansa’s music in Jon’s car.)

*

On Sunday afternoon, once she’s slept off the previous evening, Sansa finds herself at the dining room table with her younger sister (and all of Arya’s maths homework, which she flies through at the same pace Sansa would learn a new melody).

They’re not speaking much – a combination of said maths homework and the magazine Sansa’s leafing through with utmost interest. When they do get to conversation, it almost immediately moves to talk of the play.

“What are you gonna do with all your spare time now?” Arya asks, setting down her pencil in favour of taking a sip from her water bottle.

“Same as always, I imagine,” Sansa replies. She pauses in her perusing, eyes up to meet her little sister. “Annoy you.”

Arya snorts. “You never stopped that.”

“I know.” Sansa lets out a deep breath. “But Robb’s about to get extra serious about his A Levels, so you won’t be able to run off to him for company. And the same goes for Jon,” she adds quickly, preempting the words before they shoot from Arya’s already-opened mouth.

The girl rolls her eyes, and Sansa thinks that will be that, so she returns to her magazine. However, after a pensive moment, Arya seems to have been reminded of something else.

“I still think Jon would’ve beaten Harry at Florian,” she tells Sansa, with all the absent-minded nonchalance of someone who picked up their pencil with the intention to work but who now has no desire to do so.

“Jon’s never acted before,” Sansa says.

“Harry didn’t seem all that experienced either!” Arya scowls into her sums. “I mean, as knights go, Jon driving you to and fro seems heroic enough.”

“Florian was also a _fool_ , though.”

Arya mutters something then along the lines of, _For you? Still sounds like Jon_ – and it seems odd to Sansa, but when she encounters Beth Cassel at school the next day, she wonders if Arya’s words were perhaps oddly _prescient_ : Jon had certainly been both heroic and foolish by coming to blows with Ramsay Bolton that past Saturday.

Beth had played one of Jonquil’s ladies-in-waiting, and more importantly was in the living room when the conflict occurred, resultantly taking it upon herself to explain the situation to Sansa when they catch each other in between classes.

Apparently, the reason Jon had vaulted over a couch and whacked Ramsay Bolton across the jaw – and started such a fight that Sansa is honestly shocked not to have heard it – was, in fact, Sansa herself. Ramsay had said something about her – maybe about her legs, or her mouth, or – Beth can’t quite remember.

“You should’ve seen it, Sansa,” she says, but Sansa’s almost glad she didn’t.

She can’t believe Jon would do something like that, just for her.

 _It’s got to be because Robb wasn’t there to_.

*

Now that the production’s over, social talk turns – for the most part – toward the annual Leavers’ Ball. It’s a privilege extended only to Year 13s, as indicated by the name, but in spite of this, it has the whole school buzzing. Lots of people go above and beyond with elaborate invitations, but even more intense is the gossip as to who will invite whom. Then there is the question of dresses, in which Sansa is most specifically interested. (The whole thing excites her, really, even though she’s still got so long to wait for hers.)

Regarding Jeyne’s Leavers’ experience, and his own, Robb enlists Sansa’s help, as she is the most hopeless romantic he knows. He also calls upon Jon’s assistance, and Sansa supposes Jon must have some degree of romance to him – beyond looking and acting like, y’know, a _prince_ – despite the fact he’s never notified anyone at all of a crush in, probably, Sansa thinks, his entire life.

Nonetheless, she finds herself reclined on her brother’s bed as he makes very effective use of his swivel chair’s nominal function. Jon’s due any moment, heading over from his place for an effective brainstorming session.

“Oh, God,” Robb says, his face scrunched up in disgust seemingly out of nowhere, “Hardyng isn’t gonna ask you to the Leavers’, is he?”

Sansa snorts. “I hope not – Cissy and Saffron have both sworn he’s taking them.”

(Sansa, who wants no involvement in any of it, has the misfortune of a Textiles class with Cissy and a Music class with Saffron. While one would think that conversation could be avoided in a Music class, if not in a Textiles one, such a conclusion would mean forgetting that Saffron’s instrument of choice was the guitar, which – much to Sansa’s despair – left her with full speaking abilities.)

Robb appears concerned. “Gets around, that lad – doesn’t he, Jon?”

Jon, who has just appeared in the doorway, raises his eyebrows. “Who?”

“Harry Hardyng,” Sansa explains.

Jon’s eyes, still wide, dart over to her, his hands clenching tight on the jacket he’s just shrugged out of. “Surely, you’re not – ? _Are you_ – ?”

She laughs. “No. I’ve kissed that boy enough times, I’ve got no desire to do it by choice.”

Robb groans, and Jon gives a brow-furrowed, blinking swallow as he sets down his jacket. “Right,” he murmurs. “Fair enough.” A moment later, when he’s properly looked around the room, seemingly everywhere but directly at Sansa, he asks, “Where’s Theon? Wasn’t he meant to be helping out?”

Robb shrugs. “He said he’d come along, but who really knows with Theon?”

“I really shouldn’t have asked.”

“I don’t know,” says Sansa, “I reckon he’d be flattered by your overestimation.”

A smile tugs at Jon’s lips, and he surrenders to it. Talk turns then to Jeyne, and how Robb’s going to ask her to the ball, and all thoughts of Theon or of Harry are entirely forgotten.

*

Despite the depth of their planning, Robb ends up disregarding all options. He spends the following weekend at Jeyne’s, and just opens his mouth on Sunday morning and asks her directly. When he tells Sansa, she’s unimpressed, but unsurprised.

“Jon says he feels like he wasted an afternoon.”

Sansa looks at her brother. “Well, I can’t imagine why, Robb.”

*

When Leavers’ _does_ – eventually – arrive, Sansa’s disappointed to find she’s seeing a film with Myranda at the same time Robb’s friends are coming over for pre-ball festivities. _Yes_ , she’s wanted to see the updated version of _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_ since it was announced – she’s loved the animated version for as long as she can remember – but there’s also nothing she loves more than an occasion, and this is, short of a wedding, the _peak_ of that.

Sansa ducks out of the house and into the car with the Royces before any of Robb’s guests arrive, and upon her hurrying the opposite way post-film, she’s informed that she’s missed them all by a hair.

“But did you like the film?” Catelyn asks, to which her daughter gushes its praise.

“More importantly, though,” Sansa insists, “let me see your pictures!”

They go through them a few times – mostly they’re close-ups of Jeyne and Robb, and several of the others are blurry. Bran took the proper ones, apparently, but Catelyn won’t let Sansa interrupt her brother’s homework to ask after them.

Instead, she and Catelyn pick at the leftover pre-ball nibbles and chat as they go. Following that, Sansa heads upstairs, gets changed, and curls up on her bed with the book Uncle Benjen bought her the previous Christmas; it’s only when, hours later, she ventures back to the kitchen to make a cup of tea that she realises Robb and his friends have returned.

She finds Jon hunched over the fridge, no doubt in search of another beer. His suit jacket is gone and his sleeves are pushed up his arms, the top buttons undone and his tie missing. He turns at the sound of her footsteps and seems surprised by who he finds; his eyes skate over her, up and down, taking in the big _Winterfell Rugby_ shirt she nicked from Robb and the now-bobbly pink shorts she’s paired with it. Sansa feels underdressed, if nothing else.

“Sansa,” he says. “Hi.”

“Hi, Jon – how are you?”

She crosses the kitchen to the cupboard where the teabags are kept, and as she does so Jon speaks again. “I’m alright,” he says. “How was the film? Robb mentioned – ”

“ – It was good!” she tells him, plucking an English Breakfast bag from the tin after a moment’s toss-up between that and lemon and ginger. “Yeah, I liked it a lot, but I would’ve liked to be here to see everybody dressed up, too.”

Jon nods. “Fair, fair. You’re not joining us for afters, then?”

“No,” she says. “I thought about it… but it’s a night for you lot, I think.”

She drops the teabag into a large company-printed mug her Dad had been given last Christmas and crosses the kitchen to the kettle, closer to where Jon now stands, leaning against the bench, two unopened beer bottles in one hand.

“None of us would’ve minded,” he tells her in that low, earnest way of his. “Seriously, it’d probably be a nice change of pace to talk to someone without being glowered at by whoever’s trying to get off with them.”

Sansa laughs at that. “Am I a safe option because no one wants to get off with me?”

“No!” Jon says immediately. “That’s – not what I meant at all.”

“I’m just teasing, Jon.”

She smiles at him, at the faint red flush on his cheeks, and he smiles back.

“For what it’s worth,” he begins, right as the kettle boils and clicks off, “if _I_ were – ”

“ – Where are those beers at, Jonny Boy? Thought you’d got lost!” Robb comes to a halt in the doorway, his tone tempering at the sight of his sister. “Oh. Hi, Sans. Didn’t know you were still up.”

Sansa nods, pouring the last of the water into her tea. “Reading,” she explains. She moves to sidestep Jon and reach the fridge, but finds the boy’s beaten her to it, wordlessly holding the milk in her direction. She takes it. “Cheers, Jon.”

“Don’t mention it,” he murmurs, handing Robb the bottle of beer he had been so vehemently seeking. Jon returns as she screws the cap back on the milk – _I’ll take that_ – and fridges it again, earning another smile.

Robb bins his bottle cap and takes a swig. “Mate, hurry up – Alys is talking about how I’m great to dance with and you’re sullen as shit.”

Jon mutters a curse. “I help set her up with Sigorn, who worships the ground she walks on, and she comes back to me with _this_?”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right dance partner,” Sansa offers, stirring sugar into her tea and setting the spoon in the sink.

“Too kind,” says Robb, swigging his beer again, as Jon looks over at her and nods faintly. “Maybe,” he says.

“Mum and Dad are taking Rickon to football tomorrow morning,” Sansa informs her brother. “D’you want me to do a big breakfast? Who’s staying over?”

“You don’t have to,” Jon tells her, as Robb says, “Everyone’s staying – not sure if Ros or Sigorn will stick around for breakfast.”

She takes a sip of tea, nodding at Robb first and then assuring Jon it’s no trouble. “I like doing it, and Bran and Arya will decide I’m their favourite person as soon as they smell French toast, so, really, it’s fine.”

There’s a squeal from the living room and then Jeyne calls out, _Robb!_ and the young man in question turns to his sister, saying, “Thanks in advance, Sans. Hope we don’t keep you up – feel free to yell at us, if need be.”

“Sic Arya on us if you’re feeling particularly vengeful,” Jon offers, a glint in his eye.

“Keep her out of my room later, though,” Robb warns. “For all our sakes.”

Sansa rolls her eyes, sipping her tea again. “Let Robb have sex in peace,” she pretends to note down. “Got it.”

*

And, to the group’s credit, they don’t disrupt her sleep – no more than staying up until one o’clock in the morning at any other time would have. Sansa hears her parents shuffling Rickon through his pre-football routine, as much a labour and a wild goose chase as ever; Ned and his seven-year-old are chasing up a suddenly missing water bottle when Catelyn pokes her head into Sansa’s bedroom.

“Good morning, darling.”

“Good morning, Mum.”

Sansa sits up, rubbing her eyes as her mother says, “I woke Robb up, but I’m fairly certain he just went straight back to sleep. Jeyne’s in with him and there are four more downstairs – all equally as dead to the world.”

Humming in agreement, Sansa nods. “Bound to have been a late night.”

She climbs out of bed, meeting her mother in the doorway. Catelyn runs a hand through her daughter’s hair, and her eyes – so like Sansa’s – rest intently on her daughter’s face, which now towers, almost as Robb’s does, over her own.

“I told Robb I’d sort breakfast out for everyone,” Sansa says.

Catelyn smiles. “You’re a good girl, Sansa. Possibly a better sister than your brother deserves – and _certainly_ better than his friends do.”

They share a mirthful exhale, too bathed in morning quiet to be a proper chuckle.

“If you want to freshen up before you morph into lady of the house,” Catelyn says, “feel free to use our en suite.”

Sansa nods, and Ned clambers up the stairs then, only coming high enough onto the landing for his wife to notice him. Wordlessly, he raises Rickon’s water bottle – located at last – and Catelyn nods.

“I’ve got him in the car,” Ned says. “Boots and all.”

“Has he laced them up?”

“He insists you’re better at it than he is.”

Sansa smirks. “Your double knot _is_ the only one that doesn’t come undone halfway through a game, Mum.”

Catelyn sighs. “My youngest is a _wild_ boy.” She kisses Sansa quickly on the cheek, a reassuring hand on both of the girl’s arms. “Remember – en suite. Use the spa bath if you want to, as long as you don’t use all those lotions that clog the jets – and best of luck with the breakfast! There’s a full loaf of bread in the pantry!”

“Don’t miss kick off,” Sansa insists, waving her mother down the hall.

*

She _does_ take advantage of her parents’ master en suite – it has the largest shower, after all – and once she’s satisfactorily pruned she climbs out, dries herself off, and puts on an outfit on the flattering side of cosy. She blow-dries her hair until it’s just about perfect, then swipes on some mascara and heads downstairs to get to work.

She’s grateful for her mother’s forward thinking, pulling the French-toast-allotted full loaf of bread out of the pantry and setting it on the bench before returning for several large cans of baked beans and a carton of eggs. While she’s there she spots the remnants of last week’s batch of lemon cakes and grabs those, too, and in a bid to at least _encourage_ balanced eating, she plucks a few bananas from the fruit bowl on her way back to the part of the bench where she’s laid out everything else. She retrieves the jumbo pack of bacon out of the freezer, too, and grabs butter from the fridge as she does so.

God, there’s a job ahead – but, really, that’s when she’s at her best: with a seemingly impossible task in front of her, full of pressure and finicky parts, the outcome of which will affect a far wider reach than just her singular self.

 _Calm down. It’s a breakfast._ (But it’s a breakfast for nine – and she knows how much Robb and Arya can put away on a snacking basis alone.)

She turns the oven on, plugs in the gigantic, four-legged electric frypan, and gets to work with the rest of the house – to her knowledge – still sleeping around her.

She cooks peacefully for about fifteen minutes, flitting through each task with relative ease and humming as she does so, and then she hears the sound of someone padding into the kitchen from the living room.

“Morning,” says Jon. His voice is rough, from sleep and alcohol and probably shouting along to some important song last night.

“Morning,” Sansa replies.

He must have changed clothes last night, after she returned to her bedroom; the formal wear’s gone and a t-shirt and sweatpants have replaced it. The socks on his feet, she notices quickly, are thick and wooly and Robb’s.

“Can I help at all?” Jon asks, and he comes over to meet her.

“I think I’ve pretty much got everything sorted for now,” Sansa tells him, giving her selection of items another once-over as she transfers yet another slice of bread from the dish of egg to the pan. “A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss, though, if you’re offering.”

“Yeah, no problem – a hot drink is _definitely_ on the cards.”

“If you’re drinking black coffee, know that you’ve become a pure parody at this point.”

Jon’s brows knit together, then he chuckles. “Oh – no. No, tea’s fine for me.”

He crosses the kitchen and sets about the task.

“Milk and sugar, right?”

“Yes, please,” Sansa says over her shoulder. “Oh, and it doesn’t need to be too strong – just chuck your bag in after you’ve got as much out of it as you want.”

“Oh. Y – yeah. Cool.”

There are a few moments of silence, in which Sansa focuses on her French toast preparation and Jon waits for the kettle to boil. He retrieves two mugs from the cupboard, one a weave of dark grey and white – one of Ned’s favourites – and the other bathed in blue and red swirls, a gift for a Mother’s Day past. Once the kettle clicks off the boil, Jon grabs the milk from the fridge, and Sansa, stirred from her task by the movement, glances back around, spotting in the process something she hadn’t noticed before.

“Oh, this is pretty,” she says, leaving the pan and crossing to where the flower is laid – and has presumably been laid since last night – on the bench next to Jon’s car keys. “I love winter roses.”

“I pinned it to my tux last night,” Jon explains absently, pouring milk into the blue and red cup. “Pinched it out of the garden at home when I remembered people usually wore them.” In Sansa’s periphery, she sees him stop and watch her investigate the flower. There’s a mix of mirth and something she might call tenderness in his voice when he speaks next: “You can keep it if you want. Matches your eyes.”

Partially to hide her smile, and momentarily unable to look at him for fear she might be blushing (stupidly, because it’s just a comment from one of Robb’s friends, after all), Sansa tucks her hair behind her ear and sticks the winter rose in place there, too.

She turns to Jon once she’s sure she’s collected herself. “No date last night, then?”

“No,” Jon says after a moment, and then he seems to remember she likes sugar in her tea, too, averting his attention to spoon some into her cup. “Didn’t see much point – all my friends were coupled up and going regardless.”

Sansa gives a short hum in response. (One of the things that excites her most about her own future Leavers’ Ball is the anticipation of who will take who, and how they will ask, and whether the corsages and boutonnieres of each couple properly match. But of course none of that matters to Jon. It doesn’t matter at all – he plucked a flower out of the garden as a boutonniere, for heaven’s sake.)

“Robb had arranged for Theon and I to both go stag in a show of solidarity,” Jon adds, “but you know what Theon’s like – he had his tongue down someone’s throat in five seconds.”

Sansa giggles. “New record.”

Jon laughs, too, and crosses the room to set Sansa’s cup of tea down beside her.

“I’m guessing it was Ros’s?” Sansa asks as he does so.

“Ros’s what?”

“Ros’s throat,” Sansa clarifies. “That’s why she was here last night.”

“Oh – ” Jon chuckles. “ – Yes, it was.”

“Bloody lucky, too,” Robb interjects, ducking into the kitchen, and Sansa, in the process of transferring the last pieces of French toast onto an oven tray to join the rest of the loaf, almost jumps at the sound.

Her brother has donned his rugby hoodie, but not bothered with anything over his boxers. He crosses the room to the fridge, pulling Jeyne, swamped in her boyfriend’s hoodie from the previous rugby season, along by the hand. “Theon’s been insufferable since they hooked up that night in town.” He turns, brow furrowed, hand on the open fridge door, to Sansa. “Where’s the milk, Sans?”

“Guilty,” says Jon, holding it up. “Cup of tea, Robb? Jeyne?”

Jeyne says, “Oh, yes, please,” as Robb swings the fridge shut. “Read my mind, Snow.” (And to stop Jon doing the job himself – because he _would_ – Robb comes up beside him and nudges him out of the way with his hip.) “I’ve got this – go help Great British Bake Off over there.”

Jon lets out a sigh that Sansa can hear the smile in, and picks up his mug to join her just as she closes the oven door on the French toast.

“So that’s just keeping warm in there,” she explains, pointing, “but you can be in charge of either the baked beans, the scrambled eggs, or the bacon.”

“Choose wisely, Jon,” Jeyne pipes up. “If you burn the bacon, I don’t know that Alys will forgive you.”

Robb snorts and mutters, “If she can forgive him getting into a bloody fistfight in her living room, she’ll forgive him some overdone bacon.”

Jeyne turns to him, murmuring, “You’d _think_ that, but…” and Sansa tunes the rest of their conversation out, because they’re standing far too close together and Robb’s looking at their shared teabag with the same gentleness that he’s cradling Jeyne’s waist with, and, besides, Jon’s ears have gone red, anyway.

“I’ll start with the eggs,” he tells Sansa. “Once they’re done I can slide them in the oven and move on to the beans. Cook time’s not as long.”

“Careful, Sans,” Robb remarks, returning the milk to the fridge, “Jon’s rivalling your domestic prowess.”

Jon turns with a frown to his best friend. “One second you’re bringing up me hitting someone, and the next you’re praising me. Which angle are we taking, Stark?”

Robb shrugs. “Duality of man, Snow. Duality of man.”

Sansa points Jon in the direction of the necessary pots and pans and turns the hob on for him before turning her attention to the bacon. For good measure, and a bit of added luxury, she chops the bananas and drops them in the pan, too. Robb and Jeyne, now with cups of tea in their hands, observe the action from a lean against the kitchen counter.

“Are you two going to be of any use?” Jon asks shortly, following a few minutes of scrambled egg preparation. “Or are you just going to stand there?”

Robb and Jeyne share a glance.

“I’m quite content with standing here,” says Robb. “Especially when Jeyne and I look so good doing it.”

“I bet,” comes a voice from the door, and Alys saunters into the room.

Sigorn follows at her heels like he doesn’t know what else to do, but sets himself down on one of the kitchen stools soon enough, while Alys hip-checks Jon and peeks into his pan.

“What’s cookin’, Sad-Lookin’?”

Jon allows her a sarcastic turn of his mouth, then says, “Sansa’s taken it upon herself to feed the troops this morning. I thought I’d help.”

“You’re a hero, Jon,” Alys declares. She gives his shoulder a quick squeeze and sweeps over to Sansa, who has produced yet another oven tray and is piling bacon and banana onto it. “Any way I can contribute, Sansa?”

Sansa takes a strong sip of her tea. “If you could set the table, that’d be great.”

Alys enlists Sigorn to assist her, and Sansa slides her tray into the last remaining shelf of the oven. She ducks over to Jon on her way back, just as he switches out the finished eggs for the baked beans.

“Good job, Jon.”

His shoulders tense almost imperceptibly, and she swears his ears redden where they’re holding back some of his curls – as intact, she notes, as ever, and immediately she wonders if he’s ever had to style his hair in the whole time she’s known him. With a sharp, decisive nod, she moves back to what remains – the lemon cakes.

“You planning on polishing off that whole container, Sans?” Robb asks, noticing its contents for the first time and, perhaps, Sansa’s somewhat possessive hold on it.

“Jon likes lemon cakes, too,” she shoots back.

“Since when?” Arya says loudly and dismissively, announcing an arrival that otherwise would have gone – for her silent sock-footed steps – unnoticed.

She pads through the kitchen in an overlong t-shirt and shorts, cropped hair made even wilder by both Robb and Jon’s one-handed rumpling as she passes them.

“Since months ago,” Sansa tells her sister. “He stumbled across the baking process and saw the light.”

Arya shoots a questioning glance at Jon, who nods in somewhat defensive affirmation. “ _Right_.” Sidling up closer to Sansa, she adds, “So we’ve got, what – the sweeter half of a full English and some cake to go with it?”

“Essentially,” Sansa says, “yes. It’s just about ready, too.”

At that, Robb sets his cup of tea down and claps his hands together. “Might as well wake old Theon up, then.”

Jeyne sighs. “He’ll be grand to deal with.”

“Isn’t he always?” Jon mutters, and Sansa bites back a smile at that.

“Should I go and see if Bran’s up?” Jeyne asks Sansa once her boyfriend has departed with a freshly-filled glass of water.

In the other room, said water finds its mark and there’s a shriek, a shout, and a curse, from – Sansa presumes – Alys, Sigorn, and Theon respectively. Robb chortles and then grunts, like Theon’s lunged for him. Sansa ignores it.

“He’s probably already up,” she tells Jeyne. “He usually reads in the morning, though.”

“Bran’s awake with the first sound of birdsong,” Arya explains, but she plods out of the room to call her brother in to breakfast all the same.

*

Exams set in a few weeks later, and once those are rounded up, the boys have the last of their graduation festivities. Summer sweeps in and seems to recede just as quickly, months of Robb helping at his father’s work and Jon putting full time at the climbing centre. Sansa spends all her time in the sun with someone-or-other, taking walks with her mother and swimming with Beth and even attempting a hike through the woods with Arya, who outpaces her and then complains about it the rest of the way.

There are fun nights when they’re all together – in which Sansa almost absorbs the air of time ticking down, of finality, as though she’s experiencing it firsthand, rather than from Robb or Jeyne or Jon or Alys – but August comes to an end almost before she registers it. And then they’re all leaving her: Jeyne for Bristol, Alys for Edinburgh, and the boys – including Theon – for London.

Sansa knits Robb a pair of gloves, and then a pair for Jon, too, without quite even realising what she’s doing. The reasoning behind the gesture is not one Sansa herself can fully articulate, only to the extent that there was a feeling rising through her gut at the realisation that she’d be the eldest child in the house, and she didn’t quite know how to deal with that, and she desperately needed a way to tie her brother back to the family, and to tie herself to him, and – well – to be honest – she doesn’t know why she felt so firmly about doing the same for Jon.

“Matching set!” says Robb when she hands them over, the morning the two boys and Ned set off for London. He sounds thrilled. “Now we’re a proper package deal, Snow. Look at that!” He pulls his gloves on and extends his hands, showing them off. “Brilliant.” Squeezing his sister around the shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple, he proclaims, “You’re a legend, Sans! These’ll be well useful.”

Jon, a slight smile on his face as he stares down at his pair, looks up at Sansa. The smile grows. “Thank you very much, Sansa.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” she insists, feeling her face grow hot seemingly for no reason. “You won’t have an occasion to wear them for a while, I imagine, but it’ll be good not to have to buy a pair once you’re in need of them.”

“Of course,” says Jon, and he thanks her again. Robb musses both of their hair and leaps off to show Catelyn the gift.

*

September draws to a close, then October, then November, and before Sansa knows it she’s finished her first six months of sixth form. Christmas looms, and the time of year grows as manic as it always does in the Stark household; Robb arrives home and it all kicks off – Ned and Catelyn leave for work earlier and arrive home later, purchasing gifts, trying to keep them hidden from their youngest who still buys into Father Christmas. Sansa helps with what wrapping she can, as does Robb, and, one afternoon, days before the special occasion, she finds herself home alone, holed up in her bedroom, playing Father Christmas to Rickon herself with specially allocated wrapping paper he won’t be able to identify anywhere else.

There’s the sound of a familiar car pulling up outside and, thinking it must be Robb and Arya back from the gym (hopefully with the list of presents for their parents that Sansa had forced into Robb’s hand on his way out the door), she hurries out of her bedroom and downstairs to meet them. Only, when she gets outside, it’s not Robb and Arya. It’s not her parents either, Rickon and Bran along with them. It’s someone different altogether.

Sansa feels like the wind’s been knocked out of her.

“Jon.”

He’s out of the car, leaning back into it to reach something from the depths of a cup-holder. At the sound of her voice, he straightens up. He turns to look at her, eyes soft and searching, and she’s suddenly self-conscious, aware that her fluffy socks are pilling and don’t match her joggers, never mind her jumper, and she’s not wearing any makeup and he’s _still not looking away_.

“Hi, Sansa.”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” she says, and Jon closes the car door.

He hesitates. “I told Robb.”

“I meant – I didn’t know you were coming today.”

“Oh.” He looks down at his feet. “Well. I just thought I’d pass through – thought I might be able to call in and surprise everyone. I should’ve got in touch – no one else is in, are they? I don’t see any other cars.”

“No,” she says, “it’s just me.”

Jon opens his mouth, closes it again, runs his hands across the outside seams of his jeans. “I can – go.”

“No,” Sansa insists. “No – come in. Come on, it’s just me, and I’m wrapping Rickon’s Santa gifts while no one’s home. You can keep me company, if you like – and bring me up to speed on everything you’ve been doing.”

(Because they haven’t spoken since August. They haven’t spoken and Sansa can feel that, and she wonders if Jon can feel it, too. It’s like they’ve forgotten how to be around each other. It’s a miracle, thinks Sansa, that her foot isn’t already in her mouth.)

“Yeah.” Jon clears his throat, brow furrowing as he does so. “I’ll give you a hand, if you want.”

He’s surprisingly handy with wrapping paper, it turns out, and between them the job is done in about twenty minutes. In that twenty minutes, Sansa’s learned that he’s loving law school, he’s got a part-time job in a bar, and despite not thinking in the beginning that he would, he’s really enjoying London. Sansa’s also learned that he’s got a girlfriend.

Something in her jolts at that, like her stomach’s revolting against itself, twisting up inside her. At the same time, there’s a heaviness in her throat.

Before they can talk about it too much, before Sansa can decide what the feeling inside her is (because it _really_ isn’t indifference, or even empathetic joy, both of which are what it _should_ be), there’s the sound of another car pulling in, and Robb and Arya bolt up the stairs to Sansa’s room moments later, hooting and stomping, having seen Jon’s car.

As he tells them all when they settle down at the kitchen bench, where Robb and Arya can satisfy their post-gym hunger, he’s in town for three days – alternating between the Stark house and his great uncle Aemon’s – getting Christmas out of the way before Ygritte, the girlfriend, will arrive to take him up north. Sansa ducks away from the group then, across the kitchen to fetch herself a glass of water.

She’s Scottish, this Ygritte, and a few years older than Jon is. He met her at the gym. She’s a kickboxer, and a hiker; she backpacked across Europe last year and now works at a recreational camp where she runs tramping and archery and various survival activities. _The archery is her favourite_ , Jon tells them all.

Then Jon mentions that Ygritte’s a redhead.

Sansa can practically hear Arya’s smirk growing when the girl speaks next; her reflection, distorted in the microwave door, leans closer to Robb. “I told you he was always secretly in love with you.”

Robb laughs, and Jon cuffs Arya affectionately on the arm. “Robb’s hair’s way darker than Ygritte’s.”

“Too bad, mate – this could’ve been a wonderful thing.”

Jon’s tone is light, like he’s grinning. “I’m sure.”

“Sansa’s hair is lighter than Robb’s,” Arya pipes up. “Is Ygritte’s closer to that?”

Sansa stiffens involuntarily against the kitchen bench, glass of water sloshing in her hand, as she waits for a response that takes a few moments to arrive.

“Yeah, I s’pose…” Jon lets out a breath, and when Sansa turns back to join them, she catches the last of a look he’d cast her. “It’s – different, though.” His tone is livelier when he turns to Arya: “She doesn’t spend the same time brushing it that Sansa does – it’s almost as wild as yours was, before you chopped it all off.”

Arya _loves_ this, and she spends the next three days quizzing Jon on all things Ygritte. Christmas Eve arrives with a special visit from Catelyn’s sister’s family, the first of many large meals, and, when Jon pops his head in, a round of questions about where in Europe Ygritte had travelled to. Christmas Day brings the exchange of gifts, another near-banquet, and a second visit from Jon, which prompts interrogation about the rec camp activities his girlfriend runs. Finally, on Boxing Day, it seems Arya has exhausted herself, and when Sansa joins the rest of her family – and, almost a given at this point, Jon – at the dining table for a morning tea comprised of rather luxurious leftovers, she doesn’t hear a whisper about Ygritte. This is, perhaps, for the wrong reason.

Arya spots her sister and just about spits out her food. “You going somewhere?”

Sansa shakes her head. “No, of course not. We said we’d give the Boxing Day sales a miss this year, didn’t we?”

Unsatisfied, Arya’s brow remains furrowed. “Then why’re you dressed like that? You’ve got such a face on.”

This is obviously a critique of the makeup Sansa has, admittedly, applied. She’s not exactly sure why, knowing only that she very much wanted to look nice today. She’d picked a dress that complemented her colouring and still fit despite her continuous growth spurt, and paired it with tights, a cardigan, and a pretty pair of shoes. She’d brushed her hair until it shone. And all this, only to come downstairs and have Arya – as per – express her utmost disdain.

Catelyn nudges Robb under the table and the boy wraps an arm around Arya, covering her mouth in the process. “Ya look great, Sans,” he says. “I bet Ygritte’ll be very impressed.”

Catelyn gives her son another nudge, harder this time, while Arya snorts into her brother’s hand. Sansa feels her whole face heat up and she darts into the kitchen before they can think of anything else to laugh at her for.

Desperate for purpose, she starts to go through the motions of making a cup of tea. A tiny part of her wants to grab a paper towel and scrub off the makeup she’s wearing, but the rest of her likes it too much to do that. Arya will laugh regardless, and so will Robb. If she came out with her face rubbed raw they’d probably feel like they’d won.

There’s a sound from behind her just as the kettle boils, and she turns, almost ready to bite. But instead –

“Hey,” Jon says in that oxymoronic, soft, gruff voice of his. “You…” He gives his head the slightest shake, like he’s trying to decide how best to phrase what he wants to say. “They’ve all finished up in there; said they had to get a few things sorted before Ygritte arrives. But I… wanted to talk to you.” He takes a small step further in, closer to her. “Robb and Arya can be – brash. Insensitive. You shouldn’t let them – y’know, they just…”

“They just like making fun of their prissy sister,” Sansa finishes, trying and failing not to sound bitter.

Jon raises his eyes to hers, catching her just as she meant to turn back to the kettle.

“They wish they were as _stylish_ or as _pretty_ as their prissy sister, is what I was going to say. But I reckon they probably like making fun of you a bit, too.” He gives her a casual kind of shrug-and-smile. “That’ll be the jealousy.”

Sansa’s stomach flutters, which shocks her even through the smile she shoots back. “Thanks, Jon.”

Endeavouring to hide her presumably rosy cheeks, she averts her attention to the kettle, dousing her English Breakfast teabag in the now boiled water and pouring until she reaches the point where she’d normally add milk.

The bottle appears beside her – as it has done before when she shared a kitchen with Jon – attached to a hand and an arm and a shoulder which, understandably, comes with the rest of him. He leans against the bench, his own mug clutched in his other hand.

“Thanks again.”

“No worries,” he tells her. “I’ll trade you.”

It ends up a little awkward, Sansa thinks, when she takes the milk from Jon and – in an effort to _trade_ rather than just setting it down for him to take – shimmies her fingers as far up the handle of the kettle as they’ll go. His hand half covers hers as he takes it from her; there’s a momentary giggle on both parts (though Sansa would never say Jon _giggles_ – he’s a mirthful exhaler; a chuckler, sure – but he doesn’t _giggle_ ) and Sansa has to slide her last two fingers out from under his first ones. It’s not uncomfortable, though. Things have never been _uncomfortable_ with Jon.

“Are you looking forward to meeting Ygritte’s family?” Sansa asks, while she pours in her milk and Jon pours in his water.

“I think so,” he says, eyes firmly on the mug. “If they’re anything like her, it’ll be mad, but I reckon after a lifetime with you Starks I can handle just about anything.”

Sansa unconsciously mirrors the curve of his smile. “Oh, definitely.” She crosses the kitchen to deposit the milk back on its shelf in the fridge. “You’ve dealt with drunk Robb, cranky Arya – all of Bran and Rickon’s badgering over the years. You’ve even dealt with me, the snobbiest and most difficult of all of us. I think you’ll be fine.”

Jon shakes his head, gaze gliding over her with a stalwart sort of tenderness. “You’re not difficult, Sansa. And you’re not snobby either.”

“It’s okay – I am a bit.”

“Not detrimentally,” he insists. “I think you’re nicer than you give yourself credit for.”

She raises her eyebrows. “I’m not the one doling out compliments.”

“No,” Jon mutters, sipping his tea, “you’re just the one who can’t take them.”

She almost says she’s missed him, then, before she realises how silly that would sound. It’s not like they were close friends before he left, not like they shared much more than a few car rides and a few conversations in this same kitchen. Anyone can bond over McDonald’s dinners and makeup wipes and the odd rugby game. _You’re allowed to miss someone who got in a fistfight to defend you_ , Sansa reasons. _As long as you’re not just missing them for that one reason._

She doesn’t tell him, though. She doesn’t say anything for a small moment, as she crosses the kitchen to retrieve her cup of tea. Jon’s moved the ceramic sugar container so she can get to it immediately – and it’s so _sweet_ of him, so specifically _Jon_ , that she just about throws reservation to the wind and tells him that she _has_ missed him, because no one seems quite so calmly kind –

But Robb walks in, hooting. “Truck’s just pulled up outside, mate! Your missus _has arrived!_ ”

With a wink at Jon, he dashes off to inform the rest of the family. Sansa glances at Jon, and he at her, then he sighs in the direction of the door.

“Guess you should…” Sansa lets the sentence hang.

Jon nods. “Yeah, I’ll…”

He passes by her on his way out the kitchen door, and continues through the corridor and out of the house to greet Ygritte. Sansa picks up her cup of tea, thinks it all over a moment, and then follows Jon at a snail’s pace.

Ygritte’s voice, even from outside, carries down the hallway like a shot on the wind.

“Fancy house they’ve got here. You didn’t tell me your Robb was a lord.”

“Don’t go giving him delusions of grandeur,” says Jon.

“Why?” she presses, teasing. “Do _you_ live in a castle, too? Should I be calling you _Lord Snow_?”

“Very funny.”

“I’ll have to practice my curtsey.”

“Do _not_ curtsey to Ned and Catelyn.”

Sansa reaches the end of the corridor then, and she almost leaves the house alone, only Robb and Arya crash through to meet her, footsteps loud as elephants. Bran follows, and then Ned and Catelyn, the latter guiding an ambivalent Rickon along with her.

They all press out to greet Ygritte, impatient to meet the first girlfriend Jon has ever had. Sansa is intrigued, too, especially because of all the denial she’d met last year, on Jon’s part, about any kind of interest in girls. Perhaps that’s the reason for the twist in her gut when she finally _sees_ the two of them, hands laced together as they reach the Starks at the door of the house.

 _It’s funny._ Sansa can’t help but feel, now that they’re face to face, that she and Ygritte could be quite physically comparable on paper. They share the red hair, though in different shades; their eyes are similar, though Ygritte’s are a little greener. They have the same pale skin, but Ygritte has sharp, hard edges where Sansa is willowy. Sansa’s taller, too; noticeably so. But the similarities are there – like they’re varying manifestations of one person’s listed characteristics. This thought of Sansa’s is only exacerbated by the fact that the first thing Robb does upon being introduced is ask Ygritte, “Are you sure you’re not another one of _us_? Because I’ve told Jon time and time again, if he _wants_ to marry into the family, all he has to do is ask me.”

This gets a laugh, and the rest of the introductions are exchanged with ease. It’s a quick affair – even with Arya, who watches Ygritte with an expression almost akin to awe – and soon enough, Catelyn is inviting Ygritte in for a cup of tea before she and Jon head further north.

She accepts, and the lot of them file inside, Sansa just ahead of the happy couple who hang back in the corridor.

“That _Sansa’s_ pretty,” Sansa hears Ygritte mutter to Jon, and she wonders if the girl always sounds so like she’s making fun. “Bet _she’d_ ask for a _curtsey._ ”

“ _Ygritte_.”

Ygritte chuckles, straight and harsh. “You’d give it, too, wouldn’t ya?”

“Oh, _I’d_ curtsey, would I? Wouldn’t even bow?”

“You’d do as she asked,” she jokes, right in his ear, and Sansa’s own feel like they’re prickling. She’s sure no one else can hear – no one else is in earshot, but she’s not really, either, and shouldn’t be eavesdropping –

“ _Ygritte_ ,” Jon says sharply, almost a snap. “That’s not funny.”

The cup of tea that follows is, Sansa’s sure, divisive. Most of her family would say it went swimmingly, Rickon wouldn’t remember it enough to say anything and furthermore probably wouldn’t care to, and Sansa finds that she spends the entire time gulping down, and refilling, her cup of tea. She’s on her third refill when Jon and Ygritte say it’s about time they headed off. All the Starks filter out to watch them.

There are hugs, and handshakes, both of which Sansa avoids, using the excuse of herding Rickon or, rather unnecessarily, making sure Bran’s wheelchair is stable. Jon seems to pause a moment, as though wondering if she’ll straighten up and wind her arms around him, then Ygritte gives the truck’s horn a few pointed honks and he abandons the effort.

He climbs in the passenger seat and Sansa, who now brings herself to properly look at him, can’t help but think that’s wrong. Jon’s a _driver_ – unless he’s with Robb, perhaps, because Jon’s always helped to keep Robb on course. So Jon’s a navigator, maybe, but he’s not a DJ, and he’s not the type to unscrew a bottle cap so the driver’s not dehydrated, and he’s certainly not a necessities-distributor.

Jon drives the car. Jon leads the charge – Jon delivers you safely.

Jon buckles his seatbelt next to Ygritte.

Sansa watches him go, and some melancholy knot in her throat makes her wave with as little effort as she can muster – only she has to run to catch Rickon as he bolts down the driveway and once she’s scooped him up in one arm her wave to Jon is full and genuine.

She thinks the raised hand and small smile she gets in return – just for her, because he’s looking at her ( _as always_ , and she kind of loves it when he’s looking at her) – is about as Jon Snow as it gets.

She doesn’t see him again for eighteen months, not until he and Robb help move her down to London. It doesn’t seem to matter.

That Yuletide goodbye stays on her mind for the longest time.

 


End file.
